


Never Have I Ever

by warren_space



Series: New Terra-tory [3]
Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: BDSM, Book 4: Cibola Burn, Cunnilingus, Exhibitionism, F/M, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Friends With Benefits, Jim Holden in Panties, Let's make that a thing, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Season/Series 04, Threesome - M/M/M, Timestamp, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:28:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24395767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warren_space/pseuds/warren_space
Summary: Five times Alex didn't suck Amos's dick, and the first time he did.This story focuses on Alex and Amos within the framework of Jim/Amos/Naomi/Alex (established by the New Terra-tory series.) If you're repulsed in any way by Jim/Amos, Jim/Amos/Naomi, Jim/Amos/Alex, or Jim/Amos/Naomi/Alex, this is probably not the fic for you, but I love you anyway.This is a timestamp in the New Terra-tory series. Chapters 1-5 of this fic take place in the week between chapters 8 & 9 of The New Normal. Chapter 6 (parts 1 & 2) and the epilogue take place after the fic is over. You don't really need the first two fics as context, but these vignettes reference events in the series and exist in the dynamic the series creates, so I do recommend reading those first.
Relationships: Amos Burton/Alex Kamal, Amos Burton/Jim Holden, Amos Burton/Jim Holden/Alex Kamal, Amos Burton/Jim Holden/Alex Kamal/Naomi Nagata, Amos Burton/Jim Holden/Naomi Nagata (mentioned), Jim Holden/Alex Kamal
Series: New Terra-tory [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745149
Comments: 47
Kudos: 71





	1. morning

**Author's Note:**

> So, this fic has /kind of/ abandoned the framework of being a five times + one time fic in favor of making it just the best fic that it can be. I hope that's okay, but also don't see why it wouldn't be. So uh consider this an apology for those of you diehard five times + one time stans that would rather the fic be shorter and worse as long as it follows that framework? If such stans exist, I salute your commitment.

###  **Alex**

Alex woke up with his arms wrapped around a body that was way too big to be a little spoon. He recalled the events of the night before. Holden ate Amos out, fucked him while Alex watched. Alex came on Amos's face— he  _ came _ on  _ Amos's _ face— and Holden, the fucking nympho, licked it up like real-dairy Earther ice cream, which might as well be solid gold in the Belt. 

His whole life, Alex was not a kinky man. He had vanilla sex with long-term monogamous partners, who were few and far between, and always women. He wasn’t bad at sex, he didn’t think, but he wasn’t adventurous. Sex was good the way it was. Really good. He didn’t see a need to make it different. 

That is, until he learned that Amos, Holden, and sometimes Naomi were having some of the weirdest sex he could ever imagine. Some of it was even beyond his own imagination, and he had a feeling he didn’t know the half of it. He’d been up half the night before watching premium gay porn on Amos's dime, more as research than jerk-off fodder. 

He was having a little bit of a freak-out, paired with a wicked headache from sipping too much whiskey straight from the bottle. It was different from the previous day’s freakout, in which he pitied himself for his unrequited attraction to Amos. He’d learned that Amos was actually, somehow, attracted to him. This could happen. They could have sex, and it would be good. He didn’t need to panic about it. 

“You gonna be weird?” Amos asked. It took Alex a little while to answer that. 

“Gonna be hungover.” That didn’t answer Amos's question, but it was all he could offer. He was going to try not to be weird. 

“So I’m gonna make breakfast. You comin’?” Amos asked, casual as always. Of course Amos wouldn’t be weird. Or, of course Amos wouldn’t be weirder than usual. 

“I’ll meet you there. Need painkillers. Then tea,” he said, standing up as well. Amos was on his way out the door, naked as the day he was born. Alex envied the confidence, but didn’t mind the view. “You’re not gonna wear clothes?”

“Want me to?” He walked back toward Alex, dick hanging between his legs on full display. Alex was never really what Amos might call ‘cock-hungry.’ He liked to watch the slick slide of a man’s cock into a tight, warm body— whether it was in porn or on display like Holden and Amos right in front of his eyes. He wasn’t repulsed by dick in any measure, it just wasn’t what he reached for, given the choice. He wanted to reach for Amos's dick. 

“Guess I don’t care,” he tried to act casual. His blush gave it away. “Don’t spill hot coffee on your junk, though. Wouldn’t want to burn that pretty dick.” He feigned confidence, but couldn’t maintain complete eye-contact. 

“Might need you to kiss it better,” he said, invading Alex’s space. 

“Might oblige you that,” he spoke quietly, hiding the terror that filled him at the very idea of Amos's massive cock anywhere near his mouth. Amos put his hand on Alex’s cheek and leaned in for a soft kiss. That was weird. He didn’t expect it to be like that. Judging from the night before, and just Amos's entire deal, a soft, gentle kiss came completely out of left field. He must’ve given Amos a weird look, because he pulled away, dejected. Alex pulled him back in for a hungry, passionate kiss, their naked bodies pressing together like coming home.

Alex’s cock began to harden against Amos's thigh, and Amos smirked like that had been his plan all along. He supposed it could’ve been. Alex didn’t know how Amos could be so gentle and so terrifying at the same time as he cradled Alex’s stiffening dick in his careful, calloused hand as they kissed. Alex knew Amos was good with those big hands. He could probably disassemble the entire Rocinante with those hands and put it back together, given the time and reason for it. Alex felt lucky to deserve the attention of those miraculous, talented hands. 

Alex was breathing heavily as Amos kissed his neck and graced his length with a teasing, feather-light touch. 

“You freakin’ out, Martian?” Amos asked, in a deep and soothing voice that Alex didn’t know he was capable of equipping. 

“Little bit,” he said, honestly, hoping Amos wouldn’t decide he wasn’t worth the hassle. Holden wouldn’t put up a fuss about sucking his cock. 

“Wanna talk about it?” If Alex had ever heard Amos say that before, it was either sarcastic or annoyed. This was genuine.

“Do you?” 

“Fuck, no,” he smiled, sitting down on the couch and patting the space next to him, “but I ain’t gonna touch you if you’re gonna freak out about it, so if you’ve got something to say, better come out with it.” Alex took the invitation to sit, keeping a little bit of distance between them. Amos's expression said ‘fuck that,’ and he moved over so their thighs pressed together. Amos pressed another kiss to Alex’s jaw. “Talk.” 

“I don’t know how to say it without you thinking I’m an asshole.” 

“You and Holden are like the same person, you know that?” 

“Please don’t compare me to Holden while I’m naked. That’s a contest I can’t win.” Amos looked at him like he was stupid, and it made him feel good, even if it probably shouldn’t have. 

“I’m not going to justify that by arguing with you. You want somebody to put on a sexy voice and tell you you’re the hottest thing since the fucking sun, call a phone sex hotline. If me wanting to put your ballsack in my mouth ain’t flattery enough, I don’t got shit to offer you. You’re attractive to me. Is that what you needed to hear?” Yes. It wasn’t what he was asking for, but he really, really needed to hear it. 

“No.  _ Yes, _ but no. I, uh, I don’t know how to say this.” 

“I’ll tell you what I told Holden last time he was being a little bitch. Say what you gotta say. If it’s the wrong thing to say, sure, there could be consequences. But if it’s not, you get that big, hard cock sucked. I promise you, it’s worth the goddamn risk.” Alex took a deep breath. 

“I... don’t think I’m ready to suck your cock.” Amos looked like he didn’t understand.

“I ain’t askin’ you to.”

“You’re gonna suck mine and not expect me to… return the favor?” 

“Not a favor if I like it.” 

“Sure, but…” 

“Listen, this ain’t a transaction. You don’t owe me shit in exchange. Wanna put you in my mouth, and then in my ass if you’ll have it, and then I want to go make you breakfast. You gonna give me what I want or should I go get it somewhere else?” 

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna… you can…”

“Enough of that.” Amos sank to his knees in front of Alex, and didn’t bother teasing. Alex wasn’t small, but he was swallowed easy to the hilt by Amos's talented mouth. He tugged gently on Alex’s balls as the tip pressed against the back of his throat. He was showing off, surely, but it worked. He pulled back, the leaking head slipping from his mouth with a wet sound, and looked up at Alex to gage his reaction. 

Alex was already a wreck. He was learning that it really didn’t take much effort from Amos to ruin him completely. Were he a younger man, he’d have come on the spot. He was happy, for the first time, that he wasn’t. Amos was prepping his own ass with his fingers and the lube that had been abandoned there last night, and the promise was beyond exciting. Amos smiled with his tongue in his cheek, admiring the mess he’d made of Alex. 

“Should probably hurry, Holden and Naomi could wake up soon,” Amos said, and Alex called his bluff. 

“So?” Amos laughed. 

“Guess you’re right.” 

“Get up here,” Alex said, “wanna watch you... do that.” 

“Holden and I are gonna have to teach you to talk dirty.”

“Not my thing.” 

“Come on,” he coaxed, panting on two fingers, “use your words, brother. Tell me what you want to see.”

“Want to see you… wanna see you finger-fuck yourself. For me.” Amos moaned and moved from the floor to the couch on his hands, or one free hand, and knees. “No,” Alex surprised both Amos and himself, “face down, ass up.” Amos obeyed, taking his fingers out only long enough to reposition himself, folding his arm under his head and arching his back before resuming his task. 

Alex watched, jerking himself slowly, slicking himself up. Giving himself something, but not enough to make him come. 

“Fuck me, come on,” Amos demanded, pulling his three fingers out of his hole. Alex tried to remember what he’d learned from watching Holden do this. He replaced Amos's fingers with his own, pumping them in and out slowly. “Don’t want your fucking fingers, Alex. Give me that cock or I’ll push you down and sit on it.” He rubbed himself in the crack of Amos's ass, contemplating that. He didn’t think he’d consider that a punishment, but he liked having Amos on his hands and knees, so he gave him what he asked for. He pushed inside thinking about how lucky he was that he got to have this, and fucked Amos hard as he could, like he wasn’t thinking about how lucky he was that he got to have this.

“Spill in me. Want you dripping out of me.” Amos was jerking himself off while he took it, moaning and gasping and swearing under his breath. Alex wondered if the noises were a performance, but they turned him on even if they were. He did as he was told, finishing as Amos tightened under him. 

“Shit, man, thanks,” Alex said after, and then wished he could take it back. Amos laughed. 

“Don’t thank me for letting you come in my ass. I’m not a fucking charity. You can have my hole whenever you want.” 

“Do you want me to…” he didn’t know what he was offering. He didn’t know what he had to offer. But Amos hadn’t come yet. 

“No. Go get a painkiller for your head, I’ll make your tea.”

“You don’t want to… finish?” 

“Don’t need an audience to jerk off.” 

“Would you like one?” It was less of an offer and more of a plea. It was a will-you-let-me, not a do-you-want-me-to. Amos smiled, and rolled his eyes, jerking himself harder and faster as Alex’s eyes didn’t leave his moving hand. 

“Fuck,” he breathed out as he came, and Alex knew that it was the sound of genuine pleasure spilling from his lips. 

When Amos came, signaling the sex part was over and the being crewmates part would resume immediately, Alex suddenly became hyper-aware of his own nudity. He scrambled to put his suit back on. 

“Forgetting something?” Amos asked, amused, still lounging on the couch, content in his nudity. He dangled Alex’s boxers from his finger. 

“Right,” Alex replied, blushing, and had to underdress all over again under the weight of Amos's gaze. He reached for his boxers, and Amos pulled them away from him. “Don’t be an asshole.” 

“What? I’m just enjoying the view,” he teased. “You’re not the only one who likes to watch.” He threw the offending article at Alex. “Put ‘em on slow.” 

“You want… an  _ un _ -strip... tease?”

“Guess not. Just like looking at you naked.” Alex dressed at a normal speed, ignoring Amos’s catcalls. 

He left to get the painkiller, and tried not to freak out. 


	2. so tell me what you want what you really really want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is neither satisfyingly porny or plotty. Some chapters can be just for me, as a treat.

###  **Amos**

Amos was disassembling guns, cleaning the parts, and reassembling them. It was a necessary thing to do once every couple of months. It was not a necessary thing to do several times a day, which is how often he was doing it recently. It was how he kept himself busy when he couldn’t put his dick in something. 

“Hey, brother, you busy?” Alex asked, peeking bashfully through the doorway. The guy really needed to chill out. Amos hoped he was there to ask for a blowjob. 

“Nope. Want your cock sucked?” Alex looked offended by the proposition. “Just asking.” 

“I was thinking we could hang out.” 

“You’re not asking me on a date, are you?” Alex’s face might’ve given away how he felt about that, but Amos couldn’t read it. 

“No. I’m asking you to talk to me for a little while and not take your dick out.” Amos didn’t really see the point of hanging out with their dicks  _ inside _ their pants, but he acquiesced. He liked Alex’s company. “What are you doing with all of our guns?” 

“Spring cleaning,” he answered, continuing at his task. 

“Is it Spring on Earth?”

“How should I know?” 

“Does cleaning guns usually take several days?” 

“It does when you’ve done it about a hundred times.” 

“Why?”  _ Because I already came three times today and the work shift isn’t even over yet. Little Amos needs a break. _

“I don’t know, what have you been up to?” 

“I made cookies.”

“They any good?” 

“Nope,” Alex admitted. Amos laughed.

“We been here, what, two weeks?”

“Something like.” 

“It’s a long road to Tycho.” 

“Yeah,” said Alex, wistfully. The only noise for a little while was the clicking sound of metal on metal. When Alex couldn’t take it anymore, he asked, “can I ask you something?” 

It was a question that Amos hated to hear. When people had questions that didn’t suck, they didn’t have to preface them with ‘can I ask you a question?' He figured it would be something about their ‘relationship,’ or something else he didn’t want to talk about. He didn’t understand why Alex couldn’t just put his dick in him and shut up about it after. He resolved that he probably had to say yes, which was another reason why he hated the question. What’s the point? 

“Sure,” he answered, “but I reserve the right to tell you to fuck off.” 

“You always have that right.”

“So shoot.” Amos didn’t look up from his task. 

“What do you... like? Like in bed.” That wasn’t what he expected. He stopped fussing with the guns and turned to Alex, thinking about it. He took Alex by the wrist and pulled him out of the engineering room onto the nearest crash couch, the same one where Alex had watched Holden eat his ass the other day.  _ Ah, memories. _

“What do I like in bed?” Amos repeated the question once they were sitting. 

“Yes.” 

“You haven’t seen enough to know the answer to that?” 

“Thought I had. Thought you liked it brutal like you do it with Holden. But then you jerked me real gentle and sucked me off and let me top you and didn’t ask me to return the favor and now I’m lost.” 

“You think because I’m rough in bed with Holden, who likes it rough, I’m gonna, what? Force you down, make you take it when you told me you don’t want to?” Amos was furious at the notion. He knew he wasn’t a good guy, but he didn’t fuck people without consent, and he didn’t coerce people to consent to him. He thought his family knew that. 

“No. I know you can take no for an answer,” Alex course-corrected, and Amos was relieved. He didn’t know who he was if his best friend thought he’d pressure someone into sex. Consent was the only thing that separated him from being a monster. “I’m just saying, you were gentle, and sweet, and understanding. Weren’t like that with Holden.”

“What can I say? I contain multitudes.” 

“I want to know what you like. When you’re not being what Holden needs. When you’re not being what I need. What do you want? If you could have anything?” Amos didn’t fully understand the question. Was Alex asking him to pick between top or bottom? Dom or sub? Eat or be eaten? He didn’t have a preference. He liked to have the variety. 

“I’m not picky.”

“Come on. You pick up a hot stranger. They tell you you can do anything you’ve ever wanted to try.”

“If someone tells a random guy as big as I am that they’ll let him do anything, they want it rough but don't know how to ask for it.”

“So you’d give it to ‘em rough?”

“No. I’d teach ‘em how to ask for it.” He thought about teasing some mystery girl, slow and tantalizing until she begged for his cock hard in her ass. 

“You could do anything you wanted, and you’d still make it all about them.” 

“Yes.” It was mostly true. He liked to figure out what people needed from him, try things and see how they reacted. He wasn’t good at reading people’s emotions, but he was exceptional at reading their sexual pleasure. He could coax gorgeous moans out of just about anyone, tell when they were fake and make them real.

“Wow, noble even in your fantasies.” That was the untrue part. His mind was pretty much a 24/7 porno reel. He had no trouble coming up with a thousand ways he’d fuck that girl, from sweet and soft in her pretty pussy to harsh and punishing in her tight asshole, and he didn’t even know what she looked like. Or if it was a woman. He figured it’d be the same for a guy, but didn’t see the point in picking up some random dude when Holden would do anything he wanted, and Alex could give him a good time with a good friend. That was all the variety he needed. He didn’t interrogate the thought that he’d probably be content to never fuck a man other than Holden or Alex ever again.

“Wait, are we talking what I’d think about doing or what I’d actually do?” 

“Would it change your answer?”

“Yes.” 

“What would you think about doing?” 

“A lot of shit I can’t say out loud.” 

“Not even just between us?” Amos narrowed his eyes in suspicion. 

“This one of your weird voyeur things?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You want to hear me tell you all the dirty things I’d do to some hypothetical sex-doll person who would let me do anything I want?”

“Makes me seem like a pervert when you say it that way.” Amos laughed. 

“If the shoe fits.” Alex scrunched up his face, mock-offended, and swatted at Amos’s bicep. When his hand connected, he didn’t move it, holding that big, bulging muscle like it was keeping him sitting up. Amos acknowledged the hand with his eyes, but didn’t say anything about it, just let it rest there. He might’ve flexed under it. 

“Maybe I just want to hear you talk dirty.” 

“What if I told you all the dirty things I’d do to a hypothetical sexy Martian man with a charming accent and a thick cock?” Amos asked, resting his hand on Alex’s leg. 

“I’ll allow it.” 

“It’s a trick question. Wouldn’t do anything. I’d just lay back and take it, let you do all the work.” 

“Yeah, and what would you have me do?” 

“This is a trap, isn’t it?”

“How do you figure?” 

“You want me to tell you that I’d have you suck my dick, and then you can be all ‘I told you that you secretly want me to.’”

“I hadn’t considered it. Kind of a good plan.” 

“No, because it ain’t a secret. Of course I want that mouth on my cock. Just don’t want it if you don’t want it.”

“Tell me what you do want. No trap.” Amos thought about it for a second, while he rubbed the inside of Alex’s clothed thigh mindlessly. He wondered absently if he could get the man hard without touching him. 

“I want to teach you how to please me. Know you’ve never been with a man ‘til me and that drives me crazy. Wanna show you just how to suck my cock to make me come just right, just where to put those thick fingers. How much lube, how much pressure, how fast, how hard.”

“That’s actually pretty... doable,” Alex said.

“Surprised? Thought I’d smack you around and fuck your ass ‘til you cried?” 

“Kinda. Something like that.”

“Nah, I’d let you do that shit to me, but I don’t need it. Just want you to fuck me good and give me a dick to suck on.”

“I thought you’d be weirder.” 

“Sorry to disappoint. I can do weird if you want weird.” 

“I don’t think I do.” 

“Good. You want a blow job? Been a while since I had something in my mouth.” 

“You sucked my cock this morning. I fucked you before breakfast.”

“Yeah, hours ago. You want this mouth or not?”

“You’re a slut,” he said, unzipping his suit to take himself out. 

“And you’re the guy takin’ your dick out for a slut,” he accused, slipping to his knees between Alex’s legs. 

“Touche. Choke on it.” 

“Yeah?”

“Please.” 

“Don’t say please. You want me to choke on your dick, make me.”

“Thought you didn’t want anything weird.” 

“This isn’t for me,” he said. 

“You don’t have to do me any favors.”  _ Always with the self pity.  _ Amos rolled his eyes and wrapped his hand loosely around Alex, teasing him to hardness.

“You’re a dumbass, brother. You wanna know what I like?” 

“It’s what I’ve been asking for, yeah.”

“I like being what you like. I like figuring out what you want, even if you’re too chicken-shit to tell me. I like trying shit, seeing if it makes you horny or makes you slap me.”

“And that works for you?”

“You haven’t slapped me yet.” 

“What have you figured out?” 

“I know you wanna be in charge, but don’t know how far you’re allowed to go. I know it makes you feel like a man when you have me on my hands and knees. I know you like it when I moan for you, makes you feel like you’re doing a good job.” 

“So it  _ was _ fake?” he asked, his face changing. He looked sadder. 

“What?”

“The moaning. It was a performance.” 

“No. Well, maybe a performance, but not fake. You felt really fucking good,” he said simply, smiling. He kissed the tip of Alex’s dick. “You need to get out of your head. Live a little.” 

“How?”

“You can start by fucking my face.” Amos took the head into his mouth, dipping his tongue tantalizingly into the slit. It couldn’t be called a blowjob. He kept his hands on Alex’s thighs, not jerking the base like he usually would, and tasted it, like offering a free sample of a blowjob. It was definitely more frustrating than satisfying, which is what he was going for. He wanted to see what it would take to get Alex to grab him by the back of his neck and force him down on it without warning.

“C’mon, you tease.” 

“Take what you want,” Amos taunted. Alex rolled his eyes but didn’t move, and Amos was impressed, if frustrated, by his restraint. Amos treated Alex’s cockhead like his prom date, kissing and licking open-mouthed. He did more suckling than sucking, far from satiating. Alex groaned, and Amos figured it was working. 

“Blow me like a grown-up, Amos. I know you know how.” 

“Make me. I know you want to.” Amos smiled for a second when he felt Alex’s hand at the nape of his neck, then opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out.

“Suck, don’t choke,” Alex instructed. Amos obliged for a little while, sucking in earnest, then pulled off with an idea.

“What happens if I choke? What’ll you do?” 

“Nothing,” Alex answered, exasperated. He pushed Amos back down. 

Amos pulled back off, went back to teasing with his tongue. Alex seemed just about ready to smack him, but Amos still taunted. 

“Come on. Threaten me a little. What happens if I disobey you?” Alex didn’t answer, just pushed Amos’s head down again. He kept his hand on the back of Amos’s head, not forcing him down, but not letting him up either. Amos considered that a victory. 

“Maybe I got no interest in training a dog,” Alex said instead of an answer. Amos shrugged, a very weird gesture to make with a dick in your mouth. He knew Alex was turned on by the playful back-and-forth, panting and blushing and loving every second of it. Deep down, Alex wanted to let go, to take control. Amos had never been wrong about something like that before, and Alex was dogshit at pretending he didn’t like something. But knowing his partner wants something isn’t the same thing as consent if they won’t admit to wanting it, so he relented. He’d have to find a way to get him to ask for it. He pulled Alex’s jumpsuit down further so it would land around his ankles, and pressed his legs apart to play with Alex’s balls while he jerked him off. 

“You gonna come in my mouth or you got other plans?” Amos asked. Alex knew his language well enough to translate that to ‘do you want to fuck me?’

“Want you to ride me,” he said, desperate for it. Amos didn’t have lube on him. 

“Gonna have to make a location change, then, cowboy. Unless you wanna force it in me without lube.” 

“As sexy as that sounds in your filthy voice, I’m pretty sure that would actually be miserable in practice.” 

“Probably. Wanna finish in my mouth or take me to the medbay?” 

“There’s lube in the medbay?”

“Yeah, ‘been hiding it places where it might come in handy.”

“And the medbay is one of those places?” 

“Yeah. The autodocs have stirrups. Perfect for—”

“I get the picture. Just suck me off.” 

Alex didn’t warn him when he came, spilling on the back of Amos’s tongue. Amos hummed, sending a shiver through Alex that made him twitch. 

“You’re so fucking good at that,” Alex said. It was a kind of an off-putting compliment, but it was genuine. Amos liked it when Alex said what he was thinking and not what he thought he was supposed to say. 

“Thanks,” he said, and got up from his knees to sit next to Alex. 

“That probably wasn’t the right thing to say, huh?” he asked, pulling his clothes back on. 

“Doesn’t have to be.” 

“Feels like I’m always putting my foot in my mouth around you.” 

“Some guys are into that.” 

“Are you?” 

“Into foot stuff?”

“Sure.” 

“Can be, if you want,” Amos said. Alex didn’t seem to like that. He was quiet for a while, and not the kind of quiet that Amos liked, where he got to be alone with his porny thoughts. It was the kind of quiet that usually meant something was wrong, and somebody wanted you to ask them about it. Amos never did. He didn’t baby people. If Alex wanted to say something, he could be a big boy and say something. 

“You like this, right?” 

“‘This’ like you fuckin’ me?”

“Yeah.” 

“No. Fucking hate it. I’m actually straight. I just suck your cock because I’m madly in love with you,” he deadpanned. Alex flipped him off. 

“Alright, asshole. Just checking.”

“Stop checking.”

“It’s just,” Alex started, and Amos found that nothing that wasn’t stupid ever started like that. “If you only do shit because you want to ‘be what I like,’ how am I ever gonna know for sure that  _ you _ like what we’re doing?” Amos had been right. That was a stupid thing.

“Alex, I am a 30- or 40-something year old adult man.”

“Do you not know how old you are?” 

“Not the point. I’m a big boy. I can use my big boy words. I’m not going to pretend to like something to make you happy. And if I ever find out  _ you’re _ pretending to like something to make  _ me _ happy, I’m gonna punch you in the dick.” 

“Good to know. Do you really not know how old you are?” 

“You worried I’m too young for you, old man?” 

“You don’t even know whether you're in your thirties or forties?”

“I figure I’m like... thirty-six or forty... three? Somewhere in there? I don’t know, how old are you?” 

“Forty seven.”

“Isn’t a year shorter on Mars? Shouldn’t you be like,” he did some math in his head, “twenty-five?” 

“You did the math that easy?”

“I’m an engineer. I’m good at math.” Alex looked impressed. People always seemed surprised to learn that Amos was smart. He didn’t let it bother him. 

“Anyway, it doesn't work like that. You’ve never been to Mars?”

“Nope.”

“Should take you there sometime. Show you around.” 

“I’m not the guy you take home to meet your parents, Martian.” 

“Would be a weird dinner, for sure. Mom, dad, meet, uh… the guy who sucks my cock and keeps me from dying sometimes.” 

“I like that. Guy who sucks your cock and keeps you from dying. I know how to be that.”

“Works for me. You’re also my friend, though.” 

“Goes without saying.” 

“Good.” The silence that followed was the good kind of silence. Amos stretched out and laid his head in Alex’s lap. 

“I didn’t make you come,” Alex said like it was some big confessional. 

“I’ve come three times today. I’m okay.”

“Three times?,” he asked, like that was a lot, “when?”

“You fucked me this morning, then after breakfast I put it in Naomi and made Holden watch, then after lunch I jerked off thinking about putting it in Naomi.” Alex was quiet for a second. 

“Holden likes to watch?” he finally asked. 

“No. He was bad so he didn’t get to play.”

“Bad how?”

“To be honest with you, I don’t remember. It was probably nothing. Sometimes I just say that ‘cause he likes to get punished, and spanking him doesn’t work ‘cause he enjoys it so much that it’s not a punishment anymore. I also really wanted to fuck Naomi.”

“Do the two of you ever do it without Holden?”

“Nope. Don’t think she’s too interested.”

“Does that hurt your feelings?” 

“I don’t have feelings,” Alex rolled his eyes at that, like he thought it was untrue. Amos hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed to learn that it was. “She lets me do what she wants me to do. Mostly I lick her pussy and play with her tits, sometimes she lets me fuck her if I earn it,” Amos was smiling, letting the memories roll like films in his movie-theater mind. 

“Are you good at,” Alex paused, like he was embarrassed to continue, “eating pussy?” Amos smiled. It was cute when Alex said vulgar things. 

“Fucking phenomenal. Why?” 

“‘Cause you’re good at sucking dick. Wondering if there’s anything you can’t do.” 

“I’m shit at writing poetry.” Alex laughed at that. 

“I don’t know, you talk dirty like you’re fuckin’ Shakespeare.”

“That what he was known for?” 

“Don’t think so. Can’t name a lot of poets.” 

“Bet Holden could,” he said fondly. Alex looked at him. 

“You have a crush on him,” he accused after a beat. 

“Who, Shakespeare?”

“Holden.  _ Jim,”  _ Alex clarified, as if it needed clarification. Amos laughed dismissively.

_ “Jim _ takes cock like a champion. He let me do every filthy fucking thing I could think of for an entire year on Ilus. Woke up with his mouth on me every morning, fell asleep inside his ass every night. He’s my fucking cock-sock.” 

“And you have feelings for him.”

“If I had feelings, yeah, they’d probably be for him.” 

“That’s sweet,” Alex said, punching his arm playfully. 

“That gonna be a problem?” 

“Why would it be?” Amos didn’t want to ask the question he was about to ask, but Alex was getting weird, and now would be the time to know the answer. 

“If you had feelings for me it might be,” he said, trying not to let it come off like an accusation. Alex looked at him with raised eyebrows, and the rejection came as a relief.

“You’re a good friend, Amos. I like your company.”

“Asked and answered. Good.”


	3. cockpit

Alex was headed up to the cockpit to check on things like he did several times every day. It was always uneventful. The autopilot worked better than any ship he’d ever manned. As long as no one got in their way, it would be smooth sailing to Tycho, and he wouldn’t have anything to do until they were only days out from their destination. They were so far out from where humans ever roamed that there was no one in half a year’s distance to get in their way if they wanted to. 

He was halfway up the ladder when a familiar noise told him that this trip to navigation would not be uneventful. 

“Fuck, Amos,” came a breathy moan that made Alex roll his eyes. 

There weren’t a lot of places Alex could go on the Rocinante without there being a possibility that he’d run into Holden whining like a bitch on Amos’s dick, and he didn’t really mind it. He knew Amos and Holden liked to fool around just about anywhere on the Roci, and didn’t give a shit if he or Naomi walked in. Holden got off on the idea of being caught, even if no one who would catch him would be scandalized by his slutty escapades. Being constantly surrounded by attractive people having kinky, athletic sex meant that Alex was pretty much horny all the time. They were probably going to have to have a very awkward talk about that when they got closer to the real world, but for now, Alex elected to let himself enjoy it. He figured it would simmer down by the time they were back in the swing of things. He could only hope that Holden was professional enough not to be answering video calls from Chrisjen Avasarala with Amos’s tongue between his legs, but recent events told him even that might be a gamble. 

Holden was sitting in Alex’s chair, naked with his legs spread farther than Alex thought a person’s legs should go. Alex couldn’t see Amos well from the angle, but he had a guess what his face might be doing between those pale, muscled limbs. This wasn’t the same kind of sex in public spaces that Alex had become used to over the last couple of days. Usually, they’d have sex on the galley table, or in the medbay, or on crash couches throughout the ship. Shared places. Alex supposed that the navigation deck was technically a shared space, but no one ever spent time there but him. It was generally regarded as his domain as long as no one else had a very good reason to be there, and there were no real reasons for anyone to be anywhere on this long, workless cruise to Tycho station. Amos and Holden having sex in the nav chair was like fucking in Alex’s bed. He wondered if Holden would even be above that. He knew Amos wouldn’t. 

This wasn’t a random space. This wasn’t a couch they were sitting on when they were suddenly overcome by horniness, falling into each other like mother nature intended. This was a plan. This was a targeted attack on every nerve in Alex’s body that sprung to life like a Pavlovian response to Holden’s soft whimpers. They wanted him to see this. 

If either man noticed his presence, they didn’t make it known. He risked announcing himself by moving to get a better view. Holden’s eyes were squeezed shut as he focused on the unadulterated pleasure shooting through his body as Amos sucked on his rim. 

“Hey, brother,” Amos said when he saw Alex. Holden opened his eyes, whimpering at the loss of pressure on his hole. His greeting was slurred, but he acknowledged that Alex was there, and Alex had to give him credit for that level of lucidness. “You wanna taste?” Amos offered, the same way a normal person might offer a spoonful of food when they were cooking. 

“All yours,” Alex rejected. Amos shrugged, and went back to his task. 

“You could, if you wanted to,” Holden said, eyes wide like a child’s, and Alex didn’t know this version of Holden well enough to know if that was a plea or an offer. 

“I know,” Alex said, running his fingers tenderly, if tentatively, through Holden’s hair. “Pretty sure you’d let anybody lick that hole.” Holden exhaled a broken laugh before his eyes fell closed again and he melted into the pleasure. 

“You wanna put a finger in this hole? He feels so good inside,” Amos offered, rubbing the tip of his finger in a teasing motion over Holden’s rim. 

Amos wanted a threesome. That’s what this was. He didn’t want Alex to watch, and then maybe join a little at the end, jerking off on Amos’s face or letting Holden nurse at the tip of his cock until he swallowed his load. He wanted Alex to finger the hole Amos prepped for him with his tongue, stretch Holden open until he begged for someone, anyone, inside of him. Maybe he wanted Alex to be the one who gave Holden what he needed— to fuck him full and get him sloppy so Amos’s bigger cock could slide in easy after. Holden apparently agreed to sex in Alex’s chair, and made the effort to reassure Alex that he was allowed to participate, so he supposed that meant he wanted a threesome, too. It at least meant he was willing, but Alex didn’t know if ‘willing’ was enough for him. It was the kind of thing Alex would want to talk about before it happened, as much as that would piss Amos off. Alex wasn’t opposed to the idea, but it scared the shit out of him. His answer wasn’t a ‘no,’ but a ‘not yet.’

“Wanna watch you,” Alex said instead of no. Amos’s disappointment wasn’t visible on his face, but Alex suspected it was there. 

“Then tell me what you want to see, brother,” he offered like a compromise. “Tell me what to do. Jim’ll take anything I give him.” 

“Not  _ anything,”  _ Holden insisted. Amos’s laugh was threaded with evil. 

“Keep your mouth shut,” Amos demanded, pressing his thumb past Holden’s bitten lips. 

“Or what?” Holden protested, the digit muffling the sound. 

“Or I’ll put my fucking foot in your mouth, and you’ll take my toes instead of my cock tonight.” 

That shut Holden up. Alex wondered if the threat was empty. 

“Is he into that?” Alex couldn’t help but ask. Holden shook his head, but obeyed the gag order. Amos must’ve considered it disobedient enough, because he spat in Holden’s face anyway.

“He doesn’t have to be into it,” Amos explained, and Alex wanted to interrogate that further, but kept his mouth shut. “If he liked it, it wouldn’t be a punishment.” 

Amos worked Holden open on those big fingers of his, and Alex watched intently. Holden kept looking at him, but Alex didn’t know what he needed. 

“This hole opens so easy,” Amos mused, and it took Alex a second to realize it was directed at him and not Holden. Alex hummed an affirmation, but didn’t have the words to speak. “Still tight somehow, after all this time, but he opens easy. Could probably fit two cocks in this slutty pussy.” The feminization sent a shiver down Alex’s spine. 

“Amos,” Holden breathed, and Alex didn’t know what it meant, but Amos seemed to understand.

“I know, baby. So desperate for something in you.” Amos was pushing one finger in and out, and even Alex knew it wasn’t anywhere near enough. “Not gonna get anything until Alex tells me what he wants me to do.” 

“Please, Alex,” Holden whined, and Alex was starting to really get what Amos liked about all of this. Holden looked perfect— Captain Flawless who was always in control, reduced to a puddle of wanton moans right before Alex’s eyes. Begging for Alex to make him feel good. It was a power trip of the sexiest variety. 

“I don’t exactly have Amos’s... imagination,” Alex excused. 

“Don’t need to be creative, boss man.” Amos said, and Alex wished being called ‘boss man’ by Amos didn’t go straight to his dick. “Just honest. Wanna hear you talk dirty. What do you wanna see me do to this pretty little toy?”

“What does he want?” Alex asked. Both Holden and Amos looked at him like it was a stupid question. 

“Who cares?” answered Holden, whining and exasperated. It earned him a hard slap across the face. 

“Be nice, brat.” 

“Alex,” Holden leveled, risking punishment, “I’m just a toy for you two to play with, okay? A prop. Stick your cock in me or don’t, just play with me. Please. I  _ want _ you to. I want  _ you _ to.” 

‘I  _ want _ you to’ was a plea. ‘I want  _ you  _ to’ was a confession. Holden wanted this as much as Amos did. He wanted to be the teaching tool Amos used to train Alex to talk dirty. 

“Give him more fingers,” Alex finally said. 

“You want me to use lube?” 

“Yes,” Alex said, with a tone that told Amos that should be obvious. Amos smiled and shrugged. 

“He’ll take ‘em without it.” 

“Use lube.  _ My _ asshole hurts just thinking about those fat fingers without lube. You’re like a goddamn golem.” Holden laughed at that, and Amos spat between his parted lips in punishment, but then he was laughing, too. Amos lubed up his three fingers and slid them inside. Holden hissed at the stretch as he skipped from one fat finger to three with no warning, but they seemed to pacify him temporarily. He sighed and gasped as they filled him. 

“Say thank you to Alex, baby boy.” 

“Thank you,” Holden said, gasping, and then “more.”

“Be grateful, brat,” he said to Holden, then turned to Alex, who was rubbing himself through his jumpsuit that was still fully on and zipped. “You can slap him, if you want to.” 

“I don’t know that I want to,” Alex said. Holden looked up at him like that was disappointing. 

“Okay, prude,” Amos joked. “Take your cock out, stay a while.” Alex unzipped his coveralls and let them fall to the floor. He stepped out of them, but didn’t remove his undershirt or boxers. 

When Holden could keep his eyes open long enough, he trained them on Alex, silently begging. 

“I want to see him ride you,” Alex said, giving Holden what he wordlessly asked for. 

“Say more about that.” 

“Oh come the fuck on, Amos,” griped Holden. Amos pulled his fingers out and wiped the lube on Holden’s face. Both Holden and Alex grimaced. Amos smacked Holden’s pale ass hard until it was pink as his blushing face.

“You’re extra bratty today, Jim. You showin’ off for Alex?” Holden didn’t answer, so Amos spanked him again, harder. 

“No, sir.” Alex had never heard Holden call Amos ‘sir,’ and it caused a disruption in his brain. 

“Use your words, Alex. You want to see our boy bounce on this cock? Ask for it. Need details.”

“I want… I want you to sit down,” his voice was shaky, unsure. “I want you to take your boxers off. And sit down with your… big cock… hard… for me. Hard for  _ me. _ ” 

“You heard the man, Jim. Up,” Amos instructed. Holden stood up on wobbly knees and Amos took his place once his boxers were discarded. 

“Fucking massive cock, fuck. Fuck.” Holden laughed. “Shut up, slut,” Alex chastised, and then immediately regretted it. Holden just laughed more, empowered by the reprimand. 

“It’s huge. Splits me in fucking half with that weapon. Makes me gape so easy.” Alex moaned. He didn’t know why Amos didn’t punish Holden for it, but he was grateful. He liked Holden’s desperate dirty talk. “You wanna see that, Alex? Wanna see Amos’s load dripping out of me? Fucking make me sit on it, Alex. Want it so bad in my slutty hole.”

“Fucking hell, Jim. You kiss Naomi with that mouth?” Alex drawled. 

“When she lets me, yeah. I need cock, Alex. It gonna be yours or Amos’s?” 

Alex really considered that. Holden was gorgeous and wrecked, and he wanted to know what it felt like to be inside him. He would. Not today, but he would. For now, Holden needed relief, Alex really, really wanted to watch. 

“Let him sit on you, Amos. Think he might die without something fat in that,” he hesitated, “sloppy fucking… pussy.” Dirty talk made him self-conscious as hell, but it drove both Amos and Holden crazy, and it felt good to say things he wasn’t normally allowed to say. Amos was right that he needed to get out of his head. Amos was the least judgmental person in the entire universe, and Holden would keep his promise not to judge. After all, nothing Alex was willing to do was nearly as out there as what Holden did regularly, publicly and proudly. The only person that would judge Alex was himself. Too bad he couldn’t figure out how the hell to stop. 

“Gonna make a pervert out of you yet, Kamal,” Amos bragged. Alex didn’t know how he felt about that, but his heart was racing and his cock was throbbing, so he figured at least his body liked it. “Come on, baby boy. Sit on this cock.” Holden was eager to obey, straddling Amos in the chair. Amos pressed the head of his dick to Holden’s prepared hole, then looked up at Alex. 

“Fucking do it,” Alex ordered, knowing it wouldn’t be enough. 

“Do what?” the cheeky bastard teased. Alex was about frustrated enough to take his cock out and give it to Holden himself, tell Amos to fuck off. He didn’t. He liked the view too much to give it up. 

“What if I just leave?” he bluffed, as if he wasn’t taking his dick out of his boxers and stroking it. 

“Go ahead,” Amos said, with a smile that said he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Alex squirted lube into his hand and used a firm grip as he jerked himself, desperate for relief. He could only imagine the tightness in Holden’s balls, he didn’t know how long Amos had been teasing him before Alex came up the ladder. 

“God fucking damn it, Amos,” he resigned. “Fucking put your cock in his ass. Shove that terrifyingly huge monster cock in him and make him come on it, for fuck’s sake, you fucking weirdos.” Amos laughed, and winked at Alex while he pressed slowly into Holden. 

“Come on, little weirdo, sit on my dick.” 

Holden moaned, seating himself completely in Amos’s lap. Alex watched, stroking himself, as that massive cock disappeared almost completely. 

“Look so fucking good like that, Captain,” Alex said. Holden didn’t respond, he just moaned into Amos’s neck as he thrusted up inside him. Amos pet his hair affectionately. 

“You stretch so good, baby boy. Bet Alex could fit a finger inside you right now. You want that? A finger in your hole next to my cock?” Holden’s answer was incoherent, but affirmative. Alex didn’t think twice before he rubbed a finger against Holden’s rim, stretched taut around Amos as he rocked in and out of it. 

“There’s not enough lube in the galaxy, brother. You are completely, and totally, stuffed full,” he said, and Holden made a disappointed sound. Holden whined when Alex stopped touching him. “Mouth’s plenty empty, though,” he said, running that same finger over Holden’s wet lips. He looked up, hopeful. 

“Gonna fuck his mouth?” Amos asked, looking hopeful as well. 

“He’s been good. Figure he’s earned it.” 

“How do you want him?” 

“Not a lot of flat surfaces up here.”

“Floor it is, then.” 

“Sure.” 

“Hands and knees, puppy,” Amos said to Holden. Holden pecked Amos on the lips before he obeyed, and Amos smiled. It was kind of cute. It might be the kind of thing that made him feel like an outsider before, but that had changed. Amos stood and pulled him in for a kiss, and he was reminded that this was his family, as fucked up as it was. He was a part of it, always. 

Holden looked perfect as ever on his hands and knees, his hole used and his mouth open in invitation. 

“You sure you want his mouth? Hole’s real fucking cozy,” Amos said. It was a casual offer he must’ve known Alex would reject, but his eyes told Alex he wanted him to accept.

“Not tonight,” said Alex, then figured he should put it in terms that Amos understood. “Want him to swallow my load.”

“Attaboy, fuck that face for me.” Amos dropped to his knees and slid easy back into Holden, coaxing moans from the glossy, full lips Alex was about to bury himself inside. When Holden moaned, it filled the air like surround-sound, and Alex could always tell it was real. Alex rubbed his hand up and down Holden’s throat, feeling the vibrations as obscenities and pleasure-filled noises dripped from his mouth.

“You gonna choke me?” Holden asked. Alex took his hands back.

“What? No. I’m just—”

“It’s okay. You can choke me. Press on the sides, though, not the front. I like it pretty brutal but I still don’t want my windpipe crushed. You also probably shouldn’t put your dick in my mouth while you’re choking me. Might pass out.”

“Well, that’s very informative. Can I skip the choking and just put my dick in your mouth?” Holden smiled, opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out, and it was more of a ‘yes’ than any ‘yes’ would’ve been. 

Alex wasn’t going to last very long with Holden’s pillowy lips around his dick, his talented tongue against the underside. Alex didn’t buck his hips, but Amos’s brutal thrusts from behind sent Holden forward onto his cock, so he might as well have been fucking his face. Holden wouldn’t have complained if he could, but Alex stayed still so he could catch his breath or speak if he had to. That, and maybe he liked to watch Holden do the work. 

“Gonna come in you, baby. Jerk your cock for me,” Amos said, his hands squeezing Holden’s hips hard enough to leave bruises. “He always gets so tight when you let him come on your cock,” he told Alex. 

“Good to know.”

“Yeah? You ever gonna man up and put your cock in this hole?”

“Haven’t decided.”

“Come on, it’s like borrowing my fleshlight. ‘Cept he’ll moan real pretty during and clean up the mess for you after.” Alex raised his eyebrows and pulled his dick out of Holden’s mouth.

“You like it when your boyfriend talks about you like that?” Alex asked Holden, whose lips were red and slick with spit.

“I like it when the guy fucking my face doesn’t pull out to ask stupid questions,” Holden deadpanned. “Feed me your load and then we can chit-chat.” Amos laughed, and Alex did as he was told. 

“I think you might be the luckiest bastard in the universe, Amos,” Alex said. 

“I know I am,” Amos answered, surprisingly tender. He grunted like a caveman as he came, which was a little more in character for him. 

Alex came quickly after, and hoped it wasn’t too obvious that he’d been waiting for Amos to come so he wouldn’t be the first. He really needed to get out of his own head. It was becoming a little pathetic. 

He was contemplating how counter-intuitive it was to be in his head about being in his head when Holden’s euphoric moan drew him back to the very sexy reality around him. Amos had jerked him to completion, and was making him lick the come off his hand. 

“Good boy. You were so good.” 

“Damn straight I was good,” Holden said, and he wasn’t slapped for it. Maybe the rules stopped applying after they came. 

Holden seemed to come back to himself as they laid in the afterglow. If either of them were uncomfortable naked on the cold, hard floor of the cockpit, they didn’t let on, so Alex didn’t either. 

“To answer your question, Martian,” Holden started, his voice almost an octave lower outside of sex than it was during, “yes, I like it when he talks about me like that. I like it when he treats me like a useless toy, made for crying on his cock and nothing else. I’m a weirdo, remember?” 

“I don’t know about that, I’d say you’re a very use _ ful _ toy, made for crying on my cock,” Amos contradicted. 

“Sorry I called you a weirdo,” said Alex, ignoring Amos. 

“Don’t be. You’re not wrong. You think I think this shit’s normal? I just got spit-roasted by my mechanic and my pilot in the cockpit of my ship, meanwhile my XO-slash-girlfriend’s downstairs making dinner, but don’t worry, she’s totally cool with it. I know I’m not exactly Captain Normal.”

“I’m okay with it as long as I get to fuck your sweet ass,” said Amos. 

“Right, ‘cause you’re more normal than I am?”

“Sure. Everything’s normal when you don’t give a shit what other people are doing. I live, I breathe, I eat, and I fuck. As far as nature’s concerned, I’m the normalest person alive.”

“I love learning the way your brain works. It never ceases to amaze me,” Holden marveled, and Amos looked playfully annoyed by it. 

“Stop it,” said Amos.

“Stop what?” 

“Getting all sappy after. You always do that.” 

“Sorry,” Holden said, but he wasn’t. Alex wondered if Amos could tell he wasn’t. 

“Anyway, You both need to stop giving a shit about what’s normal and start letting yourself enjoy things. ‘Specially you, Alex.”

“I’m working on it,” Alex said. “Guess it’s not as easy for me to put my dick in somebody as it is for you.”

“What’s so difficult about it? I have never met anybody easier. You could put your fist in him and it would be easy.”

“Leave it alone, Amos,” Holden said. “If he’s not attracted to me, he doesn’t have to be.” Both Amos and Alex looked at Holden like he’d said Luna was made of cheese. 

“You think I’m not attracted to you?” Alex asked. “Do you not know what you look like?” Holden blushed, and looked down. It was weird to see him bashful. Holden was submissive as hell, but still never bashful. 

“Either way,” Holden dismissed, like he didn’t know what to say to that, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, and you don’t owe either of us a reason for it.” 

“It’s not a ‘no’ forever. It’s a ‘no’ for today. I’m not an impulse decisions kind of guy.” 

“I get that. Take your time. I’ll still be slutty when you’re interested.”

“Good to know.”

“And I’ll still be your brother if you’re not.”

“That, I already knew.”

“Good.” 


	4. movie night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took longer than normal, starting this fic with no plan other than "I want Amos and Alex to get to fuck more" is coming back to bite me in the ass a little bit.

###  **Amos**

Alex was in the living room watching some neo-noir movie and sipping a beer when Amos found him. They greeted each other silently, and Amos maneuvered Alex’s arm so he could sit under it. Alex let himself be moved, and rested his hand on Amos’s shoulder. Amos settled into the position, satisfied. Alex looked confused. 

“Since when are you a cuddler?” Alex interrogated. 

“Holden made me soft on Ilus. You mind?” 

“No. But you’re a bit big for a little spoon.”  _ True, _ Amos thought,  _ but you’d probably freak out if I tried to be the big spoon, so I’ll take what I can get.  _

“I’m comfy. What are we watching?” 

“Stupid movie Holden likes. Crime drama.” 

“One of those new movies that pretends to be old?”

“Yep.”

“So you’re  _ bored _ bored.”

“‘Could say that.” 

“You could put some porn on. We could get off together, like the good old days,” Amos suggested. 

“You mean, what, four days ago?” 

“Sure. It was good, wasn’t it?” 

“I think my dick needs a day off. No sex for over a year and then only sex for a week? The little guy’s confused.” Amos didn’t scoff at ‘over a year,’ because he’s a nice guy, but he wanted to. Being on the Rocinante, at least before he started having sex with all of his crewmates, Amos would have to go pretty long stretches of time without getting laid, but he would always immediately make up for it whenever they made it to a station. Alex didn’t pay for sex, so he pretty much didn’t get it. ‘Over a year’ could very well have meant closer to two. Amos didn’t say anything about it. 

“Not so little,” he said instead. 

“Thanks.”

“Can we at least put on a  _ good _ movie?” 

“What kind of movies do you like? I have never seen you watch a whole movie without getting bored.”

“Don’t have a great attention span. I like movies with horny people who get fucked.” 

“So, porn.” 

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. Where I come from, a movie is more of an excuse to get a girl hummin’ around your dick than anything else.” 

“That why you’re watching with me? Doin’ your due diligence for a blowjob?” 

“Nope,” he said, “I just enjoy your company. ‘Sides, since when do I gotta do anything to get a blowjob around here? Holden will get on his knees in a heartbeat, and he’ll act like I’m doin’  _ him _ a favor letting him blow  _ me.” _

“Where is he now?” 

“Naomi’s teaching him how to do the engineering checklist.”

“Good, bet he’s dying to be useful as something other than a cock-sock right now.” 

“He is, which is why Naomi’s pretending to make him useful. But there’s no way in hell she won’t double-check everything he checks, anyway.” Alex laughed. 

“What, she doesn’t trust him?” 

“Neither do I. Holden’s real smart and a quick study, but this ship is in too bad a shape to let anything bad happen because we got a guy who never had to change a lightbulb doing checks that could mean life or death. Wouldn’t trust you, either.”

“I’ve changed a lightbulb or two in my day,” Alex defended. 

“Would you trust me to pilot the ship?”

“Not if I were dead, partner.” 

“I figure we let the pilot pilot and let the engineers engineer.” 

“So the captain does what?” 

“Looks real pretty on my cock, bless his heart.” 

“Shouldn’t talk about your boyfriend like that,” Alex said, as if he wasn’t laughing along. 

“Like what? He  _ likes _ being my sex toy.”

“But he’s not useless. He deserves our respect. More’n anybody.” 

“Think I don’t know that? If you think I don’t respect him because of the way I fuck him, you’re more clueless about all this than I thought.”

“I never claimed not to be clueless about all this.” 

“Then let me break it down. I give him what he needs. Sometimes he needs to lose control. So, I pretend I don’t respect the hell out of him and love him more than anything, and I throw him around a little,” Alex raised his eyebrows at ‘love him more than anything,’ but didn’t say anything. Amos continued, “I might fuck him like he’s nothing, but if you think for a second he doesn’t know that he’s everything? I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Wow.” 

“I would follow that man anywhere. Into the fucking sun.”

“Right, ‘cause he’s the kind of guy you follow,” Alex said quietly, pulling his arm out from behind Amos to reach for the bottle of beer he could’ve more easily picked up with his free arm. Amos understood the meaning of the gesture and moved to sit a little further away, giving Alex his space. 

“Yeah. He’s the kind of guy I follow. So are you.” Alex seemed surprised by that. Amos didn’t know that it was news. 

A long time ago, the way Amos saw people was very black and white. There were bad people, and those were people he killed, unless someone who mattered gave him a good reason not to. Then there were the people he kind of gave a shit about, who could be sorted into two categories: people you follow and people you protect. Holden and Naomi had been people he followed. Alex was a person he’d protect. When Amos told Alex that, he’d thought it was a compliment. He was saying ‘I care about you’ in the way he knew how. If Alex took it as ‘you’re weak,’ that wasn’t his problem.

But working on the Roci taught him that things couldn’t always be as straight-forward as he wanted them to be. Sometimes you have to protect the people you follow, and sometimes you want to follow the people you have to protect. Amos tried to come up with new categories, but learned quickly it was futile. People couldn’t be categorized. It sucked shit, and blew a hole in the way Amos saw the world, but people couldn’t be categorized. There were the people he didn’t care about, and the people he’d die for. Maybe it didn’t need to be more than that. 

“What happened to me being ‘people you protect?’” Alex asked. Amos knew that had struck a nerve, but he didn’t know the wound had endured this long until he brought it up the other day. Turns out, Alex could hold a grudge for years. It was an important thing to learn about the guy you’re fucking. 

“Still true,” Amos admitted. “Just not the whole truth.”

“What’s the whole truth?” 

“Maybe it’s not so black and white,” he said simply. Alex’s stare told him it wasn’t enough. “I’m gonna protect you whether you like it or not, Alex. Always.”

“I don’t need you to—”

“Shut up. It’s not about ‘need me to.’ Maybe you can fend for yourself. I don’t care. I’m gonna protect you anyway. Same with Naomi, same with Jim. Same with fucking Peaches, or Bobbie Draper, who could both kill me with their bare hands. I don’t care how fuckin’ strong, how fuckin’ smart, how fuckin’ good you are. I’m going to protect you. And you can suck it the fuck up, ‘cause it’s not changing.” 

“Okay,” Alex said, looking like he wanted to say more but didn’t know how.

“But I’d follow you, too, Martian. I would.” 

“Okay. C’mere,” Alex beckoned, putting his arm out to let Amos situate himself under it again. “You big softie.” He kissed Amos on the head, and the intimacy of it was weird for Amos and Alex, but it was comfortable, so Amos let it happen. 

Amos lasted about three minutes cuddling platonically before trying to kick it up a notch. He rubbed his hand on the inside of Alex’s thigh and made eye contact. 

“Let me taste you.” 

“Told you. Little Alex’s day off. Go chug your boyfriend’s cock.” 

“Nah, I’m sure he and Naomi are having sweet, loving sex right now. The kind I don’t get to watch.” 

“You’d want to?” 

“Any chance I get to see Naomi’s tits is a chance I’ll jump on.” 

Alex let there be silence for a little while before speaking. 

“You never flinch when I call him your ‘boyfriend’ anymore.” 

“Maybe I know you’re trying to get me to flinch.” 

“Or maybe you can’t argue anymore that the guy you live with, and kiss, and cuddle, and have sex with regularly, who you’d die for in a heartbeat, is your boyfriend.”

“Doesn’t that make you my boyfriend, too?”

“The difference is I’m not in love with you. And you’re not in love with me.”

Amos considered that. Alex thought he was in love with Holden. He might have a point. Sometimes, Amos thought that maybe he was in love with Holden. He knew that what he felt was the closest thing to love that he was capable of, but he didn’t think that necessarily qualified it as love. The love Holden could give was vast as space itself, and Amos’s paled in comparison. He wouldn’t ever tell Holden he loved him, not because he didn’t think it could ever be true, but because he knew his version of love would be disappointing to someone who loves as deeply and complexly as Jim Holden. Amos couldn’t give anything more than he was already giving. He wasn’t going to set Holden up to expect it. So, any time little inklings of love welled up in his chest and made him want to admit it out loud, he squashed them down and kept quiet. 

“I’m not in love with anybody. Holden gives better head than you.” 

“You can’t prove that,” Alex joked along, and Amos was grateful he didn’t push it. 

“Why don’t you get on your knees and make your case?”

“No, Amos.”

“Then my point stands. Great head versus no head? Point Jim.” 

“Yeah, well, I doubt I’d be good at it anyway.” 

“Practice makes perfect.” 

“I’m sorry I can’t—” 

“Don’t be, Alex, I’m just playing with your sensitive feelings.”

They cuddled for a little while, letting the movie play and sometimes watching it. Amos liked being alone with Alex. It wasn’t intense like it was with Holden. They were just two guys who hooked up sometimes. It’s what Amos was good at. 

“Yesterday, in the cockpit… was that a set up?” Alex asked once the beer made him bold enough. At some point early in the second movie they put on, Amos had gone to get more beer and make popcorn. It required a lot more than they had to get a couple of sailors even close to drunk, but a little bit of beer always loosened Alex up. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Were you having sex in my chair because your slutty boyfriend likes to get fucked in weird places or did you want me to join?” Amos was surprised the answer wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t like he was being sneaky. 

“Wanted you to let loose a little. It worked, mostly.”

“Mostly?” 

“You could’ve fucked him. I don’t know what’s stopping you.” Alex let out a deep breath. 

“Me neither, honestly. It’s just… Holden and I are complicated. Seems like putting my dick in his ass isn’t gonna cure that.” Amos didn’t know what Alex meant by ‘complicated,’ but he didn’t push it. 

“Might make you feel better.” 

“Maybe. So it was a set up?”

“‘Set up’ sounds so negative.”

“What would you call it?”

“A teachable moment.”

“Yeah? What was the lesson?” 

“Stop overthinking. Let yourself feel good.”

“You think I wouldn’t if I could?” Alex asked.  _ I think you could if you tried, _ Amos didn’t say.

“Close your eyes,” Amos said, softly, not like a command. 

“What are you going to put in my mouth?”

“Nothing, dumbass. Close your eyes.” 

“They’re closed.” 

“Okay.” Amos straddled Alex’s lap, taking him by surprise. The kisses he pressed to Alex’s cheek, chin, and neck had an unprecedented softness to them. He nipped at Alex’s ear and whispered, “tell me what you want to do to me.” 

The shortness of Alex’s breath egged Amos on. 

“I told you, I’m not fucking good at that,” Alex protested as Amos sucked at his neck, his eyes falling shut as he leaned into the pleasure. 

“It’s not about talent, Alex. You’re not writing me a fucking sonnet. It’s about shamelessness. Come on, free your mind. Tell me what you’d do with this big hard cock.” For emphasis, Amos ground his palm into the hardening bulge in Alex’s suit. Alex’s sigh was pure pleasure. 

“Told you, no sex today,” said Alex, trying to convince himself more than Amos. Amos smiled, and pulled out his hand terminal. 

“Look at all those zeroes,” he said, showing Alex the clock that showed 00:06, “it’s officially tomorrow. Your dick’s day of rest is over. You can have whatever you want, as long as you can tell me what that is.” 

“What if I don’t like talking dirty? You said I didn’t have to do anything I don’t like,” pleaded Alex like a child.

“Of course you don’t have to do anything you don’t like. I’m not asking you to talk dirty. I’m asking you to be honest about what you want,” Amos said, his lips ghosting over the shell of Alex’s ear. Alex opened his eyes, and the mood shifted like a bass drop. Alex leaned away from Amos, looked in his eyes with a serious countenance. 

“You want honest? Okay. Honest. If I could do anything to you, anything in the whole fucking universe?” Alex started, a little manic, and Amos nodded. Alex took a deep breath and stopped to think for a second before continuing. “I’d do exactly what we’ve been doing. You and me would have good, old fashioned sex with no bells and whistles. Casual, fun, vanilla sex. Or, as vanilla as it gets with you running your filthy mouth the whole time, ‘cause I like that as long as I don’t gotta participate. I’m sorry if that’s too boring for you, but it’s what I want.” Boring? Sex with Alex could never be boring. 

“As long as it’s what you want and not what you’re settling for? I’m alright with vanilla. It ain’t boring if it’s good.”

“It’s good, right?” Alex said, self-consciousness pouring from his wide, wet eyes. Amos pulled him close again, pressing their foreheads together. 

“Really fucking good, brother. That  _ all _ you want?” he asked, referring to involving Holden and Naomi. He could only hope that was clear. Clarifying it could seem like putting pressure on it, and Amos was very cautious not to do that. 

“No,” Alex said softly. “I wanna watch, too. You and Holden are fucking performance art, you know that? A real life porno nobody but me gets to see. And maybe I join in every once in a while, but on my terms. No pressure, no obligation, no mess.”

“No pressure, no obligation, no mess,” Amos repeated. “I like that. That works for me.” 

“And if you can get Naomi on board, well, I don’t think I’d say no to that, uh, orgy we’ve been talking about,” he added, like it was a post script and not the whole fucking headline. Amos’s eyes widened. 

“Really?” he asked, like a kid promised a trip to the candy store. 

“Sure. I might just watch, but I’m down.” 

“Fucking awesome. I’m so lucky.” He kissed Alex on the lips, and then trailed more kisses down his neck.

“It’ll be nice to get to see those tits you speak so highly of all the time.” 

“You dog,” Amos accused playfully. 

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I like it when you say shit without thinking first. Say more.” 

“I want to fuck you in my bed tonight,” Alex said without thinking first. Amos had jerked off in Alex’s bed, but they’d never had sex there. They usually had sex on crash couches around the ship. 

“That’s not so scandalous.” 

“I want to wake up with you, still in my bed,” he continued. That was definitely something they’ve never done. There was something intimate about sharing a bed at night. It was a line they hadn’t talked about, but they never crossed it intentionally. They’d fallen asleep on the living room couch one night with Holden, but it’d been more of a happenstance than a decision. If they’d been sober, one of them would’ve excused himself before they fell asleep. It was usually Alex who did. 

“Romantic,” Amos teased with a kiss on the lips. Alex shook his head. 

“I want to wake up with your filthy mouth on me, and then I want to fuck you in my bed all over again.” 

“Less romantic.” 

“You want flowers first?”

“I’d take chocolates.” 

“Take my cock in your mouth.” 

“Gonna make me breakfast in the morning?” 

“Sure.” Amos smiled and sank to his knees. 

“You are so easy, Martian.”

“Hey, I held out for like four hours. That’s pretty impressive considering what you look like.” 

“Yeah? What do I look like?” Amos pressed, looking up at Alex through his eyelashes. 

“Shut up,” Alex blushed.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” joked Amos. 

“You’d be fucking gorgeous if you ever shut up,” he deadpanned, unzipping his jumpsuit. 

Alex’s clothes pooled around his ankles. Amos licked a broad stripe from the base of his dick to the pinkening tip of it. 

“You taste so good,” said Amos, more mocking than genuine. 

“Yeah, yeah. Suck it,” he said. Amos took the head into his mouth, teasing the underside with the backs of his knuckles. His satisfied hum sent vibrations through Alex’s body. “Why are you such a tease?” 

“Take what you want.” 

“I want you to stop fucking around and suck my cock,” Alex said, cupping his hand at the back of Amos’s neck and pushing his head down gently. Amos willingly went, relaxing to accept the intrusion. He gagged when the tip nudged at the back of his throat. “I like the sound of you choking,” Alex said. If Amos could’ve, he’d have laughed at that. Not mockingly, but fondly. Amos pulled off Alex’s dick, rubbing the length of it between his cheek and his hand.

“Yeah?”

“That was a weird thing to say, sorry.” 

“You apologize for saying something stupid one more time, I’m gonna bite your dick,” he threatened before going back to sucking. Alex’s eyes fell shut, and Amos thought he’d decided to let himself enjoy something for once, until he opened his mouth again. 

“You’re really not gonna judge me for anything I say? Anything I ask you for?” Amos let the dick fall from his mouth. 

“I’ve been trying to tell you that.” 

“Okay. Okay,” Alex breathed, taking the abandoned dick in his own hand. “Get up. Get naked.” 

“Thought you wanted me in your bed tonight.”

“Yeah, get naked.” Amos stood up and undressed, confused but obedient. “Gimme your clothes.” Amos complied. Alex’s eyes trailed down Amos’s body and back up again, appreciative of his muscled form, if the way his eyes lit up as he bit his cheek was any indicator. 

“You just gonna look at me?” 

“Yeah. You’re hot.” Amos didn’t know if Alex had ever complimented him that genuinely before. 

“Okay.” For a little while, Amos just let Alex stare while he jerked off. 

“Go get in my bed,” Alex said after a while. “I’ll meet you there.” 

“Can I have my clothes back?” 

“Nope.” 

“Your bunk is on the other side of the ship,” Amos pointed out, looking down at himself to emphasize his hardness. 

“That a problem? You walk around naked all the time.” 

“Not usually hard as a fucking rock, though.” Amos didn’t object to walking around naked with a boner, but he didn’t really know what the point was. If Alex wanted to humiliate him, it was going to take a lot more than that. Amos wasn’t actually sure it was possible. But if Alex wanted him humiliated, he could pretend to be. 

“Quicker if you go through the galley.”

“You mean the place Naomi and Holden are most likely to be?” he said with his best approximation of puppy-dog eyes. 

“Nothing they haven’t seen before.”

“You tryin’ to humiliate me, brother?”

“Would that work?” Amos made his face look like he was considering it. 

“Worth a shot.” 

“Go. Want you in my bed on your hands and knees. If I catch you… fraternizing with anyone you see on the way there, I’m gonna be real pissed.” So that’s what it was. Alex wanted Amos to be tempted by Naomi and Holden, and he wanted Amos to choose him anyway. Amos could make that happen. 

“Okay. No fraternizing.” 

Amos’s erection didn’t wane as he walked through the ship toward Alex’s room.

The galley was an obstacle course of temptation. Naomi was sitting on Holden’s lap in one chair, two bulbs of wine on the table poured from a bottle that was more than half empty. They were laughing together. It looked like a date. They turned their attention to Amos as he walked in. Naomi wolf-whistled, and Holden laughed. 

“Alex leave you blue-balled?” Holden asked. 

“Nope. On my way to his room. Not allowed to fool around on the way there.” 

“Weird,” Naomi said, smiling. At the same time, Holden said, “hot.” They looked at each other and laughed. 

“I’m being good,” Amos bragged. 

“So I can’t suck you off right now?” Holden tempted.

“Nope. But I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.” 

“Can  _ I _ suck you off right now?” Naomi asked with a smile. Amos looked at her. It was an offer she’d never made before. He’d never ever seen her blow Holden. He didn’t know it was something she did. She was a little bit tipsy, but she wasn’t nearly too far gone to know what she was saying. She wasn’t even too drunk for him to consider taking her up on the offer, but there were two problems. One, he was pretty sure she was only offering because she knew he’d say no. He didn’t think that qualified as consent. And two, he was pretty sure that it would prove a point to Alex that he didn’t want to prove. Alex was already pretty insecure about just about everything, Amos didn’t need to make it clear that he’d turn him down the second he got a better offer. He wondered when he went from ‘I’m not going to baby you’ to ‘I will do anything to protect your feelings,’ but it was clear that he had. 

“Raincheck?”

“One time offer.” She was clearly trying to rile him up. It worked. 

“No, thank you,” he said, though it pained him. “I gotta go get fucked.” 

“You’re whipped,” she joked, like she’d won whatever Olympics Amos didn’t know he was competing in. 

“Yeah, well, my boyfriend’s kind of a pussy,” he said, winking at Holden. “It’s nice to get fucked by a real man.” 

“Why do you think I keep you around?” Naomi piled on. 

“Enough,” Holden pretended to be more offended than turned on, “go get fucked. Tomorrow I’m putting my dick in you.” 

“It’s so cute when he pretends to call the shots,” Amos said to Naomi. “I gotta go get on my hands and knees. You two enjoy your little date.” 

When he got to Alex’s quarters, Amos grabbed the lube he’d stashed in his bedside table, and got himself ready for Alex. He didn’t know when he’d get there, but he hoped it was soon. 

###  **Alex**

The first thing Alex did was finish all the beer. It wasn’t enough. He didn’t know why he was freaking out so much. He’d had sex with Amos a couple of times already, doing it in his bed didn’t make it any different. Except that it did. 

He wondered what Amos thought about Alex making him walk through the ship naked and hard. It was a weird thing to do, and Alex didn’t have a great grasp on what Amos found sexy-weird versus what Amos just found weird. So far, Amos had never objected to anything. Alex didn’t know if he ever would. Alex still didn’t really know what Amos liked. For someone who insisted that Alex be vocal about his needs, Amos hadn’t been very transparent about what he wanted. Alex found it very hard to believe that a man as kinky as Amos didn’t have any specific requests.

When the beer was finished, he went to the galley for a swig of something harder, and also maybe to catch Amos in the middle of betraying his orders. He’d like to say it wasn’t a test, that he wasn’t so petty as to put Amos through a trial to prove that he really wanted him. He’d be lying if he did. 

“Hey,” he said to Holden and Naomi, as he pussy-footed his way into the galley. 

“Hey, tiger,” greeted Naomi. “You just missed your boy-toy.”

“He can wait.” 

“Look at you, all dommy,” Holden said. Dommy? He didn’t think he was dominating Amos. Maybe he was. The idea scared the shit out of him.

“Can I ask you something? As the resident Amos expert?” Alex asked him.

“Me? I don’t know shit about Amos,” Holden answered. 

“Ain’t he your boyfriend?” 

“Sure, but he’s Amos.” Alex looked at Naomi, who didn’t appear to have a problem with Holden affirming that Amos was his boyfriend. She didn’t say anything, but it answered a lot of questions.

“Do you know what he likes in bed?” He couldn’t believe he asked that. Holden and Naomi looked like they couldn’t believe it either.

“A better question would be what he doesn’t like in bed,” Holden said. 

“Do you know the answer to that?” 

“Nope.” 

“Great.” 

“We’ve been having sex for a year in a billion different ways and I’ve yet to find something he’ll say no to.” That was more scary than reassuring. “He doesn’t like it when you tell him you love him.” That was more confusing than clarifying. 

“That won’t be a problem.” 

“Good,” Holden said. It came off as possessive, but Alex wasn’t quite sure if that’s what it was. 

“There’s really nothing specific that he likes?” 

“He likes Naomi’s boobs.” 

“Who wouldn’t?” Alex should not have said that. He looked apologetically at Naomi, but she was laughing. 

“You three are fucking insane. I should walk around naked like Amos.” Alex definitely didn’t object to that, but he knew better than to say anything. Amos hadn’t sucked all of the gentleman out of him, just most of it. Holden also said nothing, but looked like he was imagining it. Naomi rolled her eyes, still smiling, and changed the subject. “What are you stressing about, Alex?”

“How can you tell I’m stressing?” 

“Amos is on his hands and knees in your bed, and you’re here, asking Jim for advice.” 

“I just can’t figure out what he’s thinking. I think he’s saying one thing and meaning something else, but I don’t know what it is.” 

“No way. Amos never says anything he doesn’t mean. He’s not a game-player. All he expects is the same courtesy,” Holden said. “He’s fucking himself on his fingers in your bunk, waiting for your cock in his ass. I’m not a mind-reader, but think that means he wants your cock in his ass.” 

“It’s that easy?” 

“Yes, Alex. Amos needs three things to be satisfied in a sexual partnership. Consent, candor, and cock.”

“Or coochie,” Naomi added, giggling.

“I’m just being insecure, then?”

“Yes,” Holden insisted. “Amos turned down a blowjob from both of us because you told him to. I have never seen him deny Naomi anything.” 

“It was the first time. I’m still a little shocked by it,” Naomi said. 

“Were you really gonna blow him?” Holden asked, insecurity seeping through. 

“Would you have a problem with that?”

“I’d be a little jealous,” he admitted. 

“Maybe that’s part of why I offered,” Naomi smirked. 

“Okay, guess I’m gonna go fuck him,” Alex said nervously, grabbing Holden’s bulb of wine and finishing it for him. 

“Give him a kiss for me,” Holden called after him as he walked toward his own room. 

Amos had three fingers in himself when Alex opened the door.

“Took you long enough,” Amos growled, “I was just about ready to go ransack Holden and Naomi’s room for toys.” 

“But you waited.” 

“You told me to.”

“Yeah, and you obeyed me.” 

“Thought you wanted vanilla. This shit ain’t vanilla.”

“But you obeyed me anyway.” 

“Yeah. I like being your pet.”

“You’re not my pet.”

“No? You fuck my holes whenever you want. You make me beg to do you favors. You make me prep myself for you so you don’t have to finger me. You hardly touch me. You deny me more often than you actually give me anything. You just made me do a naked walk of shame through the ship and wait on my hands and knees ‘til you decided I was worth fucking.”

“I’m sorry, I—” 

“Don’t be. It’s hot as shit. I haven’t been this hard in a long time. Not a lot of guys can get me submissive. Not a lot of guys have the balls to try. I like submitting to you, Alex.” 

“So that’s what you like? Being... negged?”

“I only get to like one thing?”

“How do you like being my pet one day and then turn around and make Holden your pet the next day?”

“First of all, you’re really belittling my talents if you think I can’t do both on the same day. Second of all, variety’s the spice of life, and all that. I like different things with different people. Can get dominated by you in the morning, make Jim my bitch in the afternoon, let Naomi sit on my face in the evening, orgy at night. I’m the very model of versatility. Now fuck me.” 

“Thought you liked me making you wait.”

“A guy can only take so much. Cock, please.”

“Guess I should reward you, right? That’s how this works?”

“There’s no rulebook. But yes, you should reward me, if it means I get your cock in my ass.”

“Okay,” Alex said. “Okay.” He kissed Amos on the lips, and then on the jaw, and then on the neck. He kissed Amos on the shoulder, on bicep, on the ribcage, on the hip, on the ass cheek. “You’re not my pet, okay? You’re my best friend.” 

“Okay.”

“Let me in,” Alex coaxed, and Amos took the hint to take his fingers out of himself. His fingers curled in the bed sheets and he arched his back. “You’re my best, sexiest, most terrifying, most frustrating friend,” he whispered, replacing Amos’s three fingers with his own thumb. 

“You’re pretty fucking frustrating yourself, Martian.” 

“Relax, Earther, take what I give you.”

“Fuck,” Amos said, and Alex couldn’t tell if he was turned on or disappointed. He must’ve been turned on, because he quickly lost his composure. “Please put your cock in me, Alex. Or your fucking fist or your foot or, I don’t know. Give me something.” Alex had never seen Amos lose control during sex, and he really fucking liked it. 

“My foot? You’d like that?”

“Probably not. I’d try it, though.” 

“Is there anything you wouldn’t try?” 

“I don’t like being tied down.” 

“Physically or metaphorically?” 

“Both, I guess. I meant physically. No handcuffs, rope, zip-ties, fucking scarves. No bondage.” 

“Interesting.” 

“I don’t like being blindfolded, either. ‘Been blind. It didn’t take.” 

“Good to know.” 

“Besides, you’re hot. I don’t know why I wouldn’t want to get to look at you.” 

“You flattering me to get my cock in your ass?”

“Did it work?” Alex hummed an affirmation and pressed the head of his dick against Amos’s hole. “Well then, you are the sexiest man in the entire universe. You’re a god among men, and I am so lucky that I get to have that magical cock inside my unworthy ass.”

“Fuck you,” Alex laughed. 

“Too much?” 

“Way too much. I might never fuck you now.” 

“No,” he whined. Amos Burton honest-to-god whined. Alex spanked him, just to see if he liked the feeling of doing it. He did. “What was that for?”

“You’ve got a nice ass.” 

“Not nice enough to fuck, apparently.” Alex figured he’d teased far more than enough, and that he was probably lucky to be alive despite of it, so he gave Amos what he asked for. He pressed further into Amos’s hole, slowly and completely filling him. “Fuck.” He dug his fingertips into Amos’s hips and set a punishing pace. 

Alex spit in his hand and reached around to jerk Amos off, and realized as he stroked in time with his thrusts that it was the first time he’d ever done that. He was really goddamn lucky Amos called it dominance, and not ‘being a fucking asshole.’ He’d been frustrated with Amos for days for being too fucking selfless. He didn’t realize he’d been being selfish the whole time. 

Amos’s dick was huge in his hand. Alex had figured jerking another guy off couldn’t be much different from stroking himself, but Amos’s horsecock was a whole different ballpark. Amos must’ve caught on to his lack of finesse, because he started giving instructions as he grinded back onto Alex’s cock.

“Grip it a little tighter, don’t be shy. Twist your hand around the tip. Head’s real sensitive,” Amos guided. Alex did as he was told. 

“Like this?”

“Yeah, fuck yeah. It’s just like yours, without the hood.” 

“Give or take a couple inches,” Alex muttered. 

“Not a size queen?” 

“I don’t know what that means, but I’m guessing no.” 

“Size queen. Guy who likes big cock.” 

“Like Holden?” 

“King of the size queens, yeah.” 

“Don’t think I’m a size queen. It’s actually kind of terrifying. Can’t believe Holden puts this in his asshole.”

“Why do you think I stashed so much lube all over the ship?”

“Because you’re a slut.” 

“That, too. Finish in me, I’m gonna come.” Amos put his big hand on Alex’s and stroked himself hard and fast. His body contracted in orgasm, forcing Alex to come like a domino forced to fall. 

Amos was once again tucked under Alex’s arm. They were too big for the bed, but the closeness was comfortable. 

“I’m sorry I never jerked you off until now. That’s really fucked up.” 

“Stop apologizing for stupid shit.”

“We’ve had sex, what, five, six times this week? I’ve never made you come.” 

“You make me come with your cock in my ass.” 

“No, you make  _ me _ come with your ass on my cock. Then you make yourself come with your hand.” 

“No pressure, no obligation, no mess, right? You don’t owe me.” 

“I want to make you feel good.” 

“You do. I don’t want to keep having this conversation. If you don’t believe that I like it when you fuck me, you shouldn’t fuck me.” 

“You wanna stop?”

“No,” Amos said, “I want you to fuck me all the time. I want you to dominate my ass, take me whenever you want to, and make me beg like a bitch for it. But if you think I’m doing something I hate as a favor to you, and you’re fucking me anyway, then you’re not the good guy I think you are, and we should stop.”

“I don’t think that.” He didn’t think that Amos didn’t want to have sex with him. He just didn’t fully understand why Amos did want to have sex with him. 

“Then believe me. I’m telling the truth. I’m not hiding any secret resentment. I’m not mad you won’t suck my dick, or holding some grudge ‘cause it took you a couple of days to give me a reach-around. I’m never going to lie to you. If I’m mad, you’ll know. If I’m sad, you’ll know. If I’m dissatisfied, you’ll know.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not good at reading people. I think I’m getting better at it, and I’m trying really hard, but I’m still not good at it, and it’s exhausting. I just need you to tell me, okay? Tell me what you’re thinking, and I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. If you don’t lie, and I don’t lie, then nobody gets lied to. It’s that easy.” 

“Okay.” 

“So, here’s what I’m thinking. That was really good. And it was really hot that you made me walk around naked and wait for you. I didn’t think you had that kind of kinky shit in you. It was a good surprise.” Alex didn’t say that he took so long because he was panicking about sharing the bed with Amos, but he didn’t think leaving it out constituted lying. There was no point in rehashing the concern. In that moment, in bed with Amos, he didn’t know why he was concerned in the first place. They were still just two friends enjoying each other’s company, a little bit closer than usual. He was excited to get to wake up next to him. 

“I didn’t either, but I’m thinking I like it.” 

“And I’m thinking I’d like to do it some more, if you’re down. 

“I’m down.” 

“Good.” 

“Good.” 

Alex had no trouble falling asleep. 


	5. naked lunch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i tried very hard to keep the continuity between this fic and the new normal but it turns out writing shit out of chronological order is hard! 
> 
> also, if it matters to anyone, I changed my username from lavagay to warren_space to match my fandom side twitter and also because i had a nightmare that my mom read my fanfiction and that shook me to my very core so in order to convince myself that i had done what i could to prevent that from happening i changed my username from the same username i use for other public accounts so that people couldn't find me here i love my mom but i think maybe she should not know that i wrote this bdsm fic about the entire crew of the rocinante being in hypersexual polyamorous love with each other thank you all for reading

###  **Alex**

Holden was naked. 

Alex and Amos had a lunch date in the living room. Not a date. They were going to watch a movie and eat lunch together on the couch. Amos was in the galley making protein fried rice and beans, which he emphasized is not a two-guys-on-a-date food for reasons that Alex wished he hadn’t gone into detail about. Alex didn’t want it to be a date anyway. 

But Holden was naked, on his stomach reading a book on the couch. One knee was bent, his legs parted slightly. It was a position that could only be construed as casual to someone who didn’t know Holden. Coming from Holden, it was an invitation. An invitation that was undoubtedly for Amos. 

“What are you reading?” Alex asked, his fingertips ghosting over the back of Holden’s thigh from the crook of his knee to right before his asscheek. When Holden gasped, Alex didn’t know if he’d been startled or aroused. 

“Don Quixote. My mom gave it to me before we left. I didn’t exactly get time to read it on Ilus,” he said, as if this were a normal conversation in which he wasn’t naked. Alex let his hand slide further up to rest on Holden’s ass, sitting down next to him on the crash mattress they'd repurposed as a couch. 

“No? Didn’t get to lay out on a lawn chair under the sun while everybody was going blind?” 

“Nope,” he said simply. 

“It’s not weird reading a book your mom gave you while you’re bare-ass naked begging to get fucked?” 

“Who’s begging?” Holden asked, feigning innocence. He looked strangely at the book before tossing it to the side, presumably making the association Alex forced into his mind, and not wanting to think about his mom with his pilot’s hand on his naked body. 

“This perfect fucking ass,” Alex answered, squeezing it. “Begging me to put my fingers inside.” Holden’s smile was small and flattered. 

“You can fuck me if you want to,” Holden escalated rapidly.

“I know, Jim. You’d let anyone—” 

“No, I wouldn’t,” Holden interrupted firmly. Alex supposed he’d struck a nerve. 

“Sorry,” Alex said. “I thought you liked—” 

“I do. Don’t be sorry. But you should know it’s all just dirty talk. I don’t want you to fuck me because I’d let anyone fuck me. I just want you to. If you want to, I mean.”

“What happened to ‘I’d only suck you off if Naomi or Amos asked me to?’”

“What, in the medbay?”

“Yeah.” 

“A lot has changed.”

“It was only a couple of days ago.”

“A lot can change in a couple of days. You were judging me then. You’re not judging me anymore.”

“How can you tell?” 

“Because I’m naked in the middle of the living room spread out for anyone who wants to come and fuck me, and instead of talking shit or leaving, you’ve been gently caressing my, and I quote, ‘fucking perfect ass’ while we have a very calm and open discussion about it,” Holden pointed out frankly. Alex hadn’t even realized his hands were still idly moving down and up Holden’s upper leg and asscheek. 

“Yeah, I guess things have changed,” he said, not stopping. 

“Amos’ll do that to you. You forget your sense of normalcy. Do shit you never thought you’d do, and like it more than anything you’ve ever done.” 

“Were you this submissive before Amos?” 

“Not  _ this _ submissive. Naomi was rough with me once in a while, made me beg for her strap-on and stuff like that, but I didn’t know what I really needed until Amos gave it to me.” Alex liked the mental image of Naomi with a big fake cock. “He says he’s bad at reading people and then turns around and reads you like a book.”

“Yeah. It’s like all these kinks I didn’t know I had are written on my goddamn forehead and nobody’s told me.” 

“Yeah? Kinks like what?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

“Talking dirty’s not one of them, I’m guessing.” Alex thought back to the other day in the cockpit, stumbling over his words as Amos fucked Holden in his chair. Alex really wasn’t good at dirty talk. 

“I like it when you two do it. Makes me self-conscious.” 

“Yeah. That’s why he wants you to do it.” 

“Is it like a sadism thing?” 

“No, he’s not a sadist, as much as I’d like him to be,” he said. Alex shouldn’t have been shocked by that. Alex slipped his finger between Holden’s asscheeks and rubbed his hole. Holden gasped a little, but didn’t otherwise acknowledge the touch. Alex considered it permission. Holden continued, “he just wants you to get comfortable asking for what you want.” 

“He told you that?” Alex asked, reaching for the lube. The bottle was running empty. They’d been having a lot of sex on that couch. 

“No. Did the same thing with me,” Holden said, confusing Alex. Holden had a dirty mouth, too. He didn’t think that was something you could teach. Alex squirted the lube onto his fingers sparingly. 

“Your mouth is almost as dirty as his.” 

“Didn’t used to be. He used to have to get me drunk to make me talk. Year later, I talk like a phone sex hotline, drunk or sober. Like I said, he changes you. Takes away all your shame.” Holden’s loud and unfiltered moan when Alex pressed his pointer finger inside him was a perfect exhibit of the aforementioned shamelessness. 

“So a year from now I’m gonna be reading naked in the middle of the Roci waiting for whoever wants to come put his dick in me?”

“Hope so,” Holden breathed out. Alex didn’t think that would ever happen, but he liked the idea of learning to live without shame. He must be making progress, because he knew Amos would be in with the food at any minute, and he was still fucking a finger in and out of the captain. 

“You freaked out too? When it all started?” 

“Hell yeah. But I was on Ilus, I had to deal with Murtry and Miller and saving the fucking planet, so I had the luxury of not having to stew in it for a whole year.”

“Sounds real luxurious.” 

“You know what I mean. Freaking out about suddenly having to navigate an intense BDSM relationship with my guard while maintaining a healthy romantic relationship with my long distance XO didn’t get to be at the top of my priority list. But— oh fuck yeah right there— I freaked out about it all the time anyway. Amos took good care of me through that.” Alex nodded, adding a second finger. 

“At what point did you fall in love with him?” 

“Maybe the first time— fuck that’s good— Maybe the last time,” he pondered. His moans intensified as Alex scissored his fingers. “Maybe somewhere in between. Maybe not until we got back home. I don’t know.” Alex nodded, but didn’t say anything. He must’ve given Holden a look. “What? Did you expect me to say I’m not in love with him?” 

“He says he’s not in love with you,” Alex said. That was probably not a bomb you drop on someone while your fingers are in their ass, but Holden didn’t seem fazed but anything but the stretch of digits at his rim. “I mean, he says he loves you every once in a while, and then says he doesn’t two minutes later.” 

“Sounds about right. He says he loves me like his little brother, but he’s never gonna be in love with me.” 

“Does that hurt?”

“Your fingers in me or the fact that my boyfriend won’t admit he’s in love with me?” 

“The second thing. I know this hole can stretch a lot further than this before you complain about it.” He actually didn’t think Holden would complain no matter how far he stretched. Holden’s facial expression said he was right. 

“It used to bother me. But I don’t know. I think being his brother is a bigger deal than being his boyfriend. I don’t need to hear the words to know he loves me.” 

“He talks about you all the time. I don’t think he ever stops thinking about you,” Alex said, and Holden smiled. 

“Good,” the smug bastard said, and Alex spanked him for it. 

“How do you get to be fucking your whole crew and still get so possessive?” 

“I am a very selfish man.” 

“No, you’re not.”

“What can I say? I still get jealous. Put another finger in me.”

“Take what you’re given,” Alex said, but did as he was told anyway. 

“When did you get dominant?” 

“I’m working on it. Amos likes it.”

“You like it, too.”

“Maybe.”

“Little word of advice? If you’re gonna say shit like ‘take what you’re given,’ don’t give me what I asked for anyway.” 

“How about I do what I want and you be grateful, little boy?” Alex said, pretending his heart wasn’t racing from it. 

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” said Holden, smiling. 

“Jealous of who? Me?”

“What?”

“You said you still get jealous.” 

“Oh, yeah. He talks about you all the time, too. What happens when he doesn’t need me because you give him everything he needs?” There was sadness in Holden’s eyes, and this suddenly became a very different conversation. Alex’s hand stilled in its motion. Holden bucked back on it, because apparently he had no problem having a very serious talk about his insecurities while three fingers pumped in and out of his asshole. 

“I’m never going to be able to give him what you give him.”

“I’m not talking about the sex. I don’t want him to just be with me because you don’t bottom for him. I like it when he pretends I’m just his sex toy. I don’t want it to be true.” 

“I’m not talking about the sex, either. Amos and I are just friends. You don’t have anything to worry about. He’ll never love me like he loves you, and I don’t want him to.” 

“I don’t have any right to worry about it anyway. It’s not like Naomi and I are just friends. I don’t get to say you and Amos can’t be more than friends.”

“Okay, then you can silently be grateful that it’s true, even if it makes you an asshole.” 

“Sure, thanks.”

“You want another finger?”

“I’d rather have your cock.” 

“Amos should be on his way in here, he’ll give you what you need.” Holden nodded, trying not to look disappointed. Alex wasn’t going to fuck Holden without Amos around. 

“Then I guess you should put another finger in me. He’s big.” 

“Don’t I know it. Okay.” More lube. Another finger. Holden was riding Alex’s hand like a bitch in heat, moaning and begging for more. If Amos didn’t get there soon, Holden might run through the ship, naked and wet, to go get him.

“You fucking my toy? You know I consider that property theft,” Amos said from the doorway. He was carrying a tray with two plates of food and a six-pack of beer. 

“Way I see it, if he’s your property, and you’re my property, that makes him my property, too.”

“Thought we had a date, Martian.” 

“He was naked when I got here. Kinda thought you might’ve sent him for me.”

“No way, if you’re gonna fuck him, I’m gonna get to watch.”

“Why watch when you can participate?” Holden chimed in. Amos put the tray on the coffee table.

“Where do you want me, Alex?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Your rodeo. You want me in his mouth or in his hole?” Alex contemplated that for a second. 

“Would he eat you out?” 

“He’ll do whatever you tell him to,” Amos said, while Holden nodded frantically.

“Yes,” Holden said, drawing out the word in plea. 

“Then get naked.” Amos undressed. Alex’s fingers slowed as he watched the strip-tease that unfolded in front of him. He would never, ever tire of seeing Amos’s clothes fall to the floor.

“Don’t stop,” Holden begged. Alex spanked him, but didn’t say anything. Without pulling his eyes from Amos, Alex undressed himself, which meant taking his fingers out of Holden and listening to him whine at the loss.

“You’re okay, Captain. You can wait,” said Alex. 

“Please don’t call me ‘captain’ right now.” 

“Why not?” 

“Seems inappropriate.” 

“So the threeway sex with your crew is appropriate as long as I don’t say ‘Oh Captain, My Captain’ during?” Alex asked. 

“I don’t know. Will you put your dick in me? You can file an HR complaint later.” 

“Okay.” 

“Really? You’re gonna fuck me?”

“Did all this work getting you open, Amos shouldn’t be the one who gets to have all the fun. That okay?” 

“Hell yeah.”

Amos laid on his back at the top of the crash-couch, spreading his legs. He looked good like that. Alex usually fucked him on his hands and knees, but he made a mental note to get those muscular legs spread more often. Alex had never eaten Amos out, never sucked on his balls or taken his cock in his mouth, never even played with those pert, pink nipples. Amos’s body, sprawled out like a buffet, was a checklist of places Alex wanted to lick and suck and bite. Later, if he wasn’t too much of a coward, he would.

“Come here, baby boy,” Amos beckoned. Holden got up on his hands and knees and crawled toward Amos, putting himself perpendicular to Alex’s line of sight so they’d all three fit in a row when Alex fucked Holden. He kissed the inside of Amos’s thighs, the tip of his dick, the seam between his balls, and finally the tight rim of his hole. Holden looked up at Amos with pleading eyes, silently asking for permission. Amos nodded. Given the go-ahead, he went to town on Amos’s hole, sucking and coaxing moans from his lips. No way in hell he wasn’t great at that. Alex wondered if Holden would be down to do that to him. Amos said he’d do anything. Alex would probably be too self-conscious about it to ask. 

When Alex moved to be behind Holden once again, Amos’s eyes drifted open. They made eye-contact across the gorgeous expanse of Holden’s naked body.

“You good, man?” Amos asked. His brain translated for him.  _ Are you really going to do this? There’s no pressure. No consequences if you say no.  _

“Yeah,” he said, lubing himself up. 

“Good. Come in him, too, I want your sloppy seconds.” 

“You’re going to have to learn how to stop giving orders.” 

“You’re going to have to teach me.” 

“I know you guys are having a cute little moment, but could you please do that with your dick in me?” Holden pleaded, pausing in his assignment.

“Who told you to stop?” Alex and Amos both said at the same time. Amos’s full body laugh was gorgeous. Alex blushed, embarrassed. He slapped Holden’s ass, and then decided it was probably about time to give him what he’d been asking for.

Holden opened easily as Alex pushed inside him. He fucked slow and gentle, his hands resting on his hips. There were bruises where Amos’s fingertips must’ve pressed into his skin during a particularly rough fuck. They stood out, deep, yellowing-purple against Holden’s pale skin. Alex was careful not to agitate the bruises further, but it was less of a courtesy than an effort to deny Holden the masochistic pleasure of pain. 

“Am I allowed to fuck his face?” Amos asked Alex. 

“You’re asking me?” 

“You still don’t get how this works? If he’s my property, and I’m your property, then he’s your property, right? Can I fuck your toy’s face or are you gonna make me get off on his tongue in my ass?”

“Could you? No hands?”

“Doubt it. Could try.” Alex loved the way Amos would try anything. But Alex pretty much left Amos to make himself come whenever they had sex, so he figured the least he could do was let Holden do it for him. 

“No, you can fuck his face if he’s okay with it.” 

“He’s okay with it,” Amos answered without asking. “Take it, baby.” Holden took Amos’s cock easily. Practice does make perfect. Alex was craning a little bit to watch Holden’s big pillowy lips all stretched thin, Amos took notice. “You studying, brother?” 

“Maybe a little. There gonna be a test later?”

“No pressure,” he said with a wink. “Am I allowed to come in his mouth?” 

“Thought you wanted my sloppy seconds.” 

“Plenty of time for that later. I want you to taste my come out of his mouth.” 

“You want us to kiss?” Alex felt very weird about kissing Holden. They’d only done it once, and it was a regrettable little peck that no one knew about but them. He wanted to keep it that way. His reluctance must’ve shown on his face, because Amos shook his head.

“No, want him to spit in your mouth. That okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“It’s okay if it’s not.” 

“It is. Wanna taste you.”

“Good. Gonna come, baby boy. If you swallow it all, Alex is gonna slap you real hard across the face.” 

“I don’t want to slap him,” Alex slurred. He was feeling almost too good to protest, but he still didn’t gain any sexual pleasure from slapping someone in the face. A couple more minutes and he might’ve done just about anything Amos asked without question, though. 

“Fine, if you swallow it all,  _ I’m _ gonna slap you real hard across the face, and my hand’s gonna hurt a lot more than Alex’s would.”

“I’m gonna come, fuck,” Alex said, speeding up his thrusts. Holden pulled off of Amos’s cock and leaned back into Alex. 

“Spill inside me, Alex. Amos will eat your load outta me if you ask him to,” Holden said, his voice a little higher than normal, the way it usually got when he was close to orgasm or begging for something. In this case, it was probably both. Alex dug into the bruises on Holden’s hips to elicit a screaming moan and finished with a choked out sigh. Amos came in Holden’s mouth soon after. 

“Did you swallow?” Amos asked Holden. Holden stuck his tongue out in answer. The answer was no. “Go feed Alex that load. Spit in his mouth, sluts don’t get kisses.” Holden nodded, the good little come-dumpster, and moved to face Alex. Without thinking twice, Alex opened his mouth and let the cocktail of come and spit fall from Holden’s mouth onto his tongue and lower lip. “Swallow, both of you.” 

Alex didn’t like the taste of Amos’s come, but he liked the act of swallowing it anyway. It was degrading in the sexiest way. He thought maybe it was offensive to think that, so he didn’t say it out loud. 

“You like the way I taste?” 

“Yeah,” Alex said. Anyone could tell he was lying.

“It’s okay, neither does Holden.”

“Do you like making him do shit he doesn’t like?” Alex asked.

“Not particularly, but he likes it when I make him do shit he doesn’t like.” 

“Really?”

“You judgin’ me again?” Holden asked. 

“No, stop getting so defensive. Assume I’m never judging you. I just don’t understand how you can like doing shit you don’t like. How does that make sense?” 

“I like that he has total control over me,” Holden shrugged. 

“I guess that makes sense.” 

“Can we eat lunch now or are you gonna make me eat your come out of Holden’s ass?” Amos asked. 

“You can do that if you want to, but I ain’t kissing you for a week after,” said Alex. Holden pouted. Amos laughed, already reaching for the food. 

“The food is cold and the beer is warm. What a cruel irony,” said Amos through a mouthful of cold fried rice. 

“That’s not what irony means. Things become room-temperature when they’re left out. It’s exactly what you’d expect,” said Holden. 

“Ignore him,” Amos said to Alex, “he likes to flex his intelligence, even though he’s only smart about shit that doesn’t matter. You put a math problem in front of him and suddenly it’s ‘not in his job description.’” The petty, playful argument was quaint. It was nice to get to see a little slice of their relationship that wasn’t tangled up in the dom and sub dynamic. Alex only got glimpses of it, usually before and after sex, but once in a while they really seemed like just two guys who loved each other. 

“You two are really polar opposites, huh?” 

“How do you figure?” Holden asked.

“He’s math, you’re poetry. He’s muscle, you’re heart. He’s dominant, you’re submissive. He’s big, you’re...”

“I get it. Yeah,” Holden stopped him. “Yin and yang.” 

“You go together well.” 

“You both overthink things. Holden is a pretty toy I put my dick inside, and sometimes I love him. It’s not complicated.” Holden squinted his eyes at that. 

“I sometimes love you, too,” he said tentatively. 

“Oh, shut up. I’m gonna go heat this food up. Meet me in the galley, we’ll eat like civilized people. Jim, don’t put clothes on. Alex, I’m not in charge of you, but I don’t mind the view.” Amos put his jumpsuit over his shoulder and carried it with the tray out of the room. 

“Civilized people eat lunch without clothes on?” Holden asked. 

“Civilized people have the choice,” he smiled. “Stay naked for me, baby.” Holden nodded with love in his eyes. 

“How do you feel?” Alex asked Holden after Amos left. 

“About the sex?” Holden asked. 

“Or about being the pretty toy Amos puts his dick inside and sometimes loves.” 

“I feel warm and fuzzy and full of your come.”

“So... good?” 

“Yeah. You should fuck me more often. It’s nice to get a break from that monster cock,” he teased, punching Alex playfully in the shoulder. 

“Yeah? Maybe I never fuck that ass again.” 

“Oh, calm down. Your dick’s as big as mine, if not bigger, and you’re fucking my boyfriend. Your masculinity is intact.”

“It’s thicker, for sure,” Alex said as he bent to pick his clothes up and started to put them back on. 

“Okay, big guy,” Holden smiled. 

“Let’s go get food,” Alex said once he was dressed, and they made their way out the door. 

“By the way,” Holden added in the hallway, “you can kiss me whenever you want. Doesn’t have to be weird.” 

“Noted.” 

✧✧✧

When they arrived in the galley, clothed Naomi and naked Amos were eating at the table with two plates set out for Holden and Alex. Naomi took one look at Holden and rolled her eyes. 

“When did I sign up to be a part of a nudist colony?” 

“Blame Amos, he told me to,” Holden said. 

“And Amos is the captain now?” Naomi asked.

“God, I hope not,” Alex said. They all laughed. 

“You could take your clothes off, too,” Amos said to Naomi, “you know, if it would make you more comfortable.” The look in Naomi’s eyes was unreadable. Alex didn’t know how Amos had the audacity to talk to her like that. Naomi could take a joke as good as the rest of them, probably even better than Alex or Holden, and her sensibilities were a far cry from delicate, but she didn’t have to stand for being objectified. None of them would ever understand the experience of being the only woman on a ship full of horny men, so they made extra sure to give her the respect she was due. Amos clearly didn’t have that concern. Naomi seemed more endeared to Amos’s bluntness than offended by it. 

Naomi didn’t say anything. She just looked at Amos, raised her eyebrow, and smiled. She stood up, and Alex thought she might leave. Instead, without breaking the intense eye-contact, she unzipped her jumpsuit in one swift motion. She finessed the material over her shoulders in a practiced motion and let it fall to the floor. Her underwear wasn’t performatively sexy, which made it even sexier. She wore a cotton bra a few shades lighter than her skin tone. The fabric peaked where her nipples hardened underneath. There was no padding, not that Alex was complaining. It was a work bra, or an everyday bra that sufficed for the purpose of work, so he supposed there was no need to create superfluous weight. Her panties were grey, with no lace or frills about them. There was nothing she could wear that wouldn’t look perfect on that beautiful body and even better on the floor, but the striking contrast between such an enchanting, forbidden form and such mundane underclothes was inexplicably, yet undeniably, attractive. She didn’t even break the eye contact as she undid the clasp behind her back, which, if Alex recalled correctly from the last time he had sex with a woman a long, long time ago, wasn’t usually that swift an ordeal. She made it look effortless. Elegant, even. 

Alex and Amos were both watching with bated breath. Holden was smiling, his attention drifting between Naomi and the boys watching her like teenagers watching porn for the first time. He got to see Naomi naked every day, the bastard.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” Naomi teased, the fabric of the unhooked bra still covering her breasts. In a single sentence, she’d managed to weaponize her own nudity with unimaginable poise. Alex was beyond impressed. His own nakedness had always come with vulnerability and insecurity. Naomi wielded her sexuality against them like a sword. It was the sexiest thing Alex had ever had the privilege to witness. 

“Probably a bad idea, yeah,” Holden said. Amos kicked him under the table. “Though, I think Amos might kill me if you don’t show him your boobs right now.”

“So taking my bra off could be saving your life.” 

“It would actually be a very noble act of goodwill, when you think about it,” he joked. Naomi looked back at Amos and dropped the bra. 

Alex understood the big guy’s obsession. Her breasts were perky and perfect, gorgeous handfuls with dark nipples that he wanted to kiss and lick and worship. And if he considered that it would be fun to put his face between them and live there indefinitely, well, he figured it was okay to think it as long as he didn’t say it out loud. She took her panties off, too, dangling them from her pointer finger like bait on a hook. 

“You want these?” she asked Amos, dangling them in front of his face like a hypnotist with a pocket watch. It had the same effect. 

“I don’t think they’ll fit,” he said once he broke out of his trance, and Alex thought he should probably detect more sarcasm there than he did. “Might fit over Jim’s pretty figure, though.”

“Oh, they do,” she said with a wink. Holden blushed. “Jim, dear. Show our boys how pretty you look in my panties.” 

“I’ve never done that sober.” 

“First time for everything.” 

Holden sighed, but he put the panties on. They hardly fit. It was a miracle they made it over that round ass, and they didn’t begin to cover his soft cock. They still looked incredible, and the way he blushed all over completed the look. He sat back in his chair, and Naomi’s hand caressed his upper thigh. 

“You look so good, Jim,” she praised. 

“They’d look even better with a little matching schoolgirl skirt,” leered Amos. Holden rolled his eyes. 

“I don’t know, I think he looks better naked,” Alex said, the first time he’d spoken in a while. 

“Looks like everyone’s naked except you, Martian,” said Amos through a mouthful of food. 

“And I will be very respectfully enjoying the view, fully clothed.” 

“I’ll suck your dick if you take your clothes off,” Amos offered.

“You’d suck my dick, anyway,” Alex patted his head. “I don’t look like all you hot little 30-somethings. You enjoy running around pretty and naked while it lasts.” Naomi rolled her eyes, stood up with the same sexy confidence, walked around the table and sat in Alex’s lap. She took his hands in hers and placed them onto her breasts. He cupped them, fondling and caressing gently while looking in her eyes, even when he wanted to look down. 

“Take your clothes off,” she said. It was softer than a demand, but it didn’t feel negotiable, even though he knew she wouldn’t force him to do anything he really didn’t want to do. She played the zipper of his suit while he played with her tits, and in that moment, he would’ve let her do anything. She had that kind of control over the whole crew, not just because she was beautiful, but because she was strong and kind, gentle and trustworthy, dignified and loving. 

As he undressed at her command, Alex was really starting to understand how he fit into the new sexual food-chain of the Rocinante. It wasn’t what anyone would expect, but it worked. Amos owned Holden, Alex owned Amos and Holden, and Naomi owned Alex, Amos, and Holden. And miraculously, at the same time, they were all equals, and lovers, and friends, who would follow each other into the sun, and protect each other at all costs. They ate lunch, completely naked save for a pair of panties pulled taut around their captain’s ass, and Alex felt at home. 

The very next day, with a little help from Amos’s master plan, they had an orgy. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is my love letter to naomi nagata. naomi nagata, fictional light of my sapphic little life, if you're reading this, i am in love with you. if you would like me to respectfully kiss your boobies i am free this weekend, please contact me. i know the gravity might be a problem but i can go to the moon to kiss your boobies if you need just let me know


	6. the event: part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after a very loving orgy. This chapter/part and the chapter/part that will follow takes place after the entirety of The New Normal. The only context you need is given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops 2 parts

###  **Amos**

Amos woke up with morning wood, which was to be expected after a night of hot sex with his three best friends. The four of them were snuggled together in one big bed made of two pushed together, with Naomi on one end and Alex on the other. Holden was wrapped around Naomi like a backpack against her taller frame, his back and ass pressed up against Amos’s side. Amos’s arm was around Alex, the first time he was ever allowed to be the big spoon. 

Amos thought back to the first night he and Holden shared a bed on Ilus. It was a lifetime ago. Holden had pressed himself to the farthest end of the mattress, terrified to get too close. He’d woke up in the morning wrapped around Amos and tried to pretend it didn’t happen. Now, a year later, back home where they belong, the crew packed together like sardines in a can, if sardines in a can all loved each other very much. 

Holden’s ass was pretty and used. Amos slid a finger into his hole and massaged his prostate, coaxing him awake. Amos’s other hand covered Holden’s mouth to keep him quiet. Still, his moan was audible when he woke up.

“You up?” Amos said, uncovering Holden’s mouth. 

“Am now. Don’t stop,” he whispered desperately. Amos took his finger back and shushed him. 

“Come sit on my cock.” Holden yawned and moved, zombie-like, to mount Amos. He hissed at the stretch, but sank down in a practiced motion. They did this just about every morning on Ilus. If Holden was a good boy and took care of Amos’s morning erection, he’d be rewarded for it. Jim had come to need a load in his ass in the morning like he needed coffee in his mouth. Amos understood that Holden needed to sleep with Naomi on the Roci, but he missed waking up next to him. He wished they could all four sleep together every night. 

Holden tried to bounce on Amos’s cock, but Amos stopped him. 

“Shh, you’ll wake everybody up. Just keep my cock warm, baby.” Holden pouted, but he did as he was told, seating himself completely and not moving. 

“You’re supposed to fuck me rough. Why do I keep you around if you don’t give me what I want?”

“Because you’re in love with me. Be a good little cocksock and you’ll get what you need.” Holden rolled his eyes. 

“Remind me again why I’m in love with you?” 

“I couldn’t tell you. Guess I’m just lucky.” Holden smiled. Amos figured he could say dumb, sappy shit once in a while if it meant Holden smiled like that. 

“Does Alex really never suck your dick?”

“Alex makes me feel good in lots of ways that are none of your business.”

“You don’t tell him about the shit you do with me?”

“Sure I do. But you get off on being humiliated. I could film the shit you do and fucking broadcast it to the whole galaxy and you’d jizz your pants if it happened to be on the off occasion you were wearing any.”

“I would _not_ let you broadcast it anywhere.” 

“But you’d let me film it?”

“Yeah, probably. If Naomi was okay with it.”

“We should get that film crew back here. Bet Monica Stuart would pay big bucks to get Captain James Holden taking cock on camera.” 

“Over my dead body,” slurred Naomi as she woke up. “You’re all lucky I’m sharing this perfect view with you. Nobody else gets to see how good my man looks naked.” Amos stretched his arm out toward her in invitation. She accepted, using his bicep as a pillow as she appreciated the view of Holden naked and stuffed. Amos cupped her breast in his hand, caressing it idly. Naomi smiled and let him. She reached her hand out to stroke Holden’s cock with a loose and gentle fist.

“When we get to Tycho, we should buy this slutty ass a plug. Could keep him stuffed 24/7,” Amos said. 

“When we get back to Tycho, he’s probably going to have to start doing some work other than being your round-the-clock sex toy,” Naomi reasoned.

“I don’t know, the ship is going to have to be in the shop for like six months, minimum. Probably still going to be a lot of downtime to shove things in Holden’s ass.”

“Please don’t remind me we’re flying in a giant metal deathtrap,” said Naomi. He knew she’d really been worried about it. She unloaded it all on him most of the time because she didn’t want to scare Holden. He liked being her sounding board. It made him feel like he was capable of empathy. There wasn’t anything they could do about the Roci’s state of disrepair, so Amos elected not to think about it. Naomi’s brain didn’t work like that. She wasn’t used to there being things she couldn’t fix, a downside of being great at everything she set her mind to. 

“Is there something I should be worried about?” Holden asked, his brow furrowing as he tried to focus on something other than the sensation of stretch around Amos’s big dick. It was a noble effort. 

“Nah, Naomi’s doing enough worrying for the four of us,” Amos answered.

“Didn’t you say the ship is okay to make it to Tycho?”

“I said it’s okay to make it to Tycho if nothing bad happens,” she said, stalling the movement of her hand.

“Is there a good reason to believe that something bad will happen?” Holden asked. 

“Besides the fact that something bad always happens?” she countered.

“I don’t know,” reasoned Amos, “I feel like my luck has been pretty good lately,” he said, squeezing her boob to make it very clear what he was talking about. 

“Some of us think about something other than sex every once in a while,” said Naomi. 

“I don’t know why you would.”

“I promise you, no one is going to fuck with us on the way to Tycho. There’s no reason to right now,” said Holden. 

“Pirates don’t need a reason.” 

“Pirates don’t typically have lethal projectiles. We still do. No one is going to try anything.” 

“I know, I know. I just hate not being able to do anything about it if they do.”

“Even beat to hell, our girl is a lot higher tech than anything I ever worked on. You too, if I remember right,” Amos comforted, “you could make a can-opener fly, Boss. We’ll be okay.” 

“That was actually kind of sweet,” said Naomi, surprised. 

“Yeah. Come sit on my face, I’ll make all your troubles go away.”

“There’s my guy,” she said, shaking her head. He mock-pouted, and she kissed his exposed lower lip. She pulled him into a distracting, deep kiss, and Holden took the opportunity to bounce a little on Amos’s cock. Despite having told him no, Amos didn’t deny him the pleasure. He didn’t mind if the shaking bed woke Alex up to join the fun. 

###  **Alex**

Alex woke up to an eyeful of sexy, which he imagined was going to become a pretty regular thing. He had no complaints. 

Amos and Naomi were too busy engaged in the hottest kiss in the galaxy to notice he woke up, but Holden smiled at him. 

“You like watching your girlfriend kiss another dude?” Alex asked Holden in a groggy voice. Amos smiled into the kiss. 

“You like waking up to your boyfriend’s dick in another man’s ass?” Holden retorted. Alex didn’t protest the b-word, but he grimaced hearing it. 

“For fucks’ sake, put the rulers away,” said Naomi. “God, only you two could turn group sex into a cat fight. Get it together or Amos and I will take this elsewhere while you make us breakfast.”

“Wait, that’s an option? I choose that option,” Amos said, excited like a dog. 

“Hush,” said Naomi, “Alex, you awake enough to come eat me out?”

“Unless I’m dreaming, yeah,” he answered, trying to tone down his excitement. Both Holden and Amos looked like they’d lost a contest Alex didn’t know they were playing. 

“Then come here,” she beckoned, laying back and spreading her legs. Alex kneeled at the bottom of the bed and rested on his elbows. Holden was watching intently from his sitting position on Amos’s dick. Both he and Amos had halted their movements. Alex teased with his tongue at the gorgeous space between her spread legs, sucking a kiss at the clitoris while he slid his middle finger inside her. Her moan sent a shiver like a lightning strike through her body as he ate her pussy like he was starving for it. Her wetness soaked his hand, and he sucked the slick from his finger before tasting it from the source. His thumb vibrated on that bundle of nerves while he fucked her on his tongue. He understood why both Amos and Holden were addicted to this. “Fuck, he’s good with his mouth,” she said to Holden and Amos. 

“Not that Amos would know,” Holden joked. Alex glared at him, but wasn’t slowed in his ministrations. Amos picked him up off his dick and put him down on the bed. “No,” Holden whined, drawing out the vowel in desperation as he lost the fullness in his ass. 

“You lost dick privileges.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was a sensitive subject.”

“It’s not a ‘sensitive subject’. But I’m not gonna let you shame him for having boundaries, either. Just ‘cause you don’t have any goddamn limits doesn’t mean other people can’t.”

“I have limits,” Holden grumbled. 

“I asked you what you wouldn’t let me do and you said you _probably_ would not let me piss on you.” 

“God, I wish I didn’t hear that,” said Naomi, taking a brief pause from her quiet moaning, then going right back to it. Alex pointed his tongue and moved it quickly, firmly against her clit. Her legs shook with pleasure. He gripped her thighs firmly and steadied them on his shoulders, pulling her closer to his lips. One of his hands trailed up from her stomach to splay in the space between her tits, a calming anchor as she edged closer to orgasm. Her fingers laced in his hair and she pulled his face to her as she came on his tongue with a loud, euphoric moan. He wanted to kiss the sound from her lips, make her taste herself on his tongue. 

He didn’t act on the impulse. Instead he sat back on his heels and took deep breaths, trying to figure out if that just happened or if the entire last couple of days had been a dream. Amos moved to him, tilted his head up, and drew him in for a scorching kiss, sucking the taste from his mouth until his lips were just as glossy as Alex’s. 

“Can I have my dick privileges back?” Holden pleaded to Amos. 

“You can beg Alex to fuck you,” he offered. Holden looked at Alex with puppy-dog eyes. 

“Sure, ‘cause nothing gets my dick hard like being somebody’s last choice,” Alex snarked. Holden couldn’t refute that. It would be too obvious a lie. 

“And between me, Amos, and Naomi, you’re tellin’ me I’m not your last choice?” Holden returned the serve. He wasn’t wrong, Holden was his last choice. Not because he wasn’t deeply attracted to Holden, or because he respected him less than Amos or Naomi. He and Holden just didn’t have the same chemistry as he and Amos did, and Naomi was everybody’s first choice, for about a million obvious reasons. 

“Why do we have to have rankings of each other?” Naomi chimed in, as if Holden wouldn’t always be her number one.

“Easy for you to say, you’re everybody’s first choice,” said Alex. 

“Only ‘cause I’m the only one with tits and a pussy.” It was an over-simplification of the truth, but it wasn’t entirely false. 

“Not mine,” said Amos.

“Really? Naomi’s not your favorite?” Holden asked, not buying it.

“Maybe my favorite. Not my first choice.” 

“Holden, then?” Naomi asked. Amos shook his head. 

“Wow, congrats Alex,” Holden said, a hint of jealousy in it. Amos shook his head again. 

“Nope,” he said.

“None of us?” asked Alex. 

“All three, ten times out of ten.” He looked at Holden, who smiled like they shared a secret between them. 

“You remember that?” Holden asked.

“Remember what?” Naomi asked. 

“The first day Amos and I ever had sex on Ilus. I said something insensitive about how I’d rather be having sex with you than him.” 

“Not insensitive,” Amos interrupted, “I probably woulda punched you if you said you’d rather fuck me than Naomi, then turned around and told her it was the other way. Rather you be honest than nice.” 

“Yeah, well, it’s true. It’s always been true, and it’ll always be true. If ever for a second this foursome shit threatened my relationship with Naomi, it would be over. She does come first, always.”

“You too, baby,” said Naomi, smiling. Holden smiled back. 

“That’s just not the nicest thing to tell someone when they’re sucking a hickey on your neck,” Holden said. “That’s a before-sex conversation, not during. Anyway, I said I’d rather have sex with Naomi if I had to choose. But if I didn’t have to choose, I’d choose both, ten times out of ten. I can’t believe that stuck with you.” 

“I got a good memory about the things I pay attention to. I also remember that night you said an orgy with me, Alex, and Naomi was, and I quote, never fucking happening.”

“You were talking about doing this a year ago?” Alex asked. 

“I’ve been fantasizing about the four of us in a million different ways since we flew the Roci for the first time. Just didn’t think it was ever going to happen.”

“Wow,” Naomi said. Alex echoed the sentiment. 

“So you can all keep bickering about who’s your first choice and who’s your last choice, but leave me the fuck out of it. You’re all my first choice.” 

“I like that. Me, too,” Naomi said. “My first choice is everybody together, too.” Holden looked at her, then looked at Alex, then looked back at Naomi and nodded. 

“Me, too,” he said eventually. 

“So is this some kind of four-way marriage now?” Alex asked. He only ever signed up for sex. He didn't know it’d be so much more than that. He didn’t know how exactly he felt about it, but it wasn’t a negative feeling. As he looked around at the three people he loved most in the world, naked and happy, he felt a very confusing, but welcome, warmth. 

“No. This is us, same as always, now with a hundred percent more sex,” Naomi said. Alex could get on board with that. 

“Then me, too,” he said, smiling.

#  _✧✧✧_

Amos made sausages and mashed potatoes for breakfast, and they all sat, clothed, together to eat. In the past, group meals had been a once-a-week affair. Alex could definitely get used to sitting to eat as a family more often. 

“Since when is mashed potatoes a breakfast food?” Holden asked as Amos set a plate down in front of him. Alex carried his own plate and Naomi’s. 

“Since hash browns and home fries require real potatoes instead of a package of powder you add liquid to,” Amos reasoned.

“Breakfast food,” Naomi said with air quotes, “is such an Earther concept. There’s no ‘morning’ in space. One man’s work shift is another man’s leisure shift and another man’s sleep shift. You wake up and decide it’s dinnertime? No Belter would blink twice. _Fut es fut.”_

“Earther breakfast food is baffling, anyway. What adult wakes up and immediately wants sugary fried dough with sugary syrup and sugar on top?” Alex added. 

“We had waffles the other day,” Holden said. 

“I’m not arguing it’s not delicious. Just that it’s weirder than mashed potatoes in the morning,” said Alex, digging his fork into the pile of potatoes and gravy on his plate.

“If biscuits and gravy are breakfast food, and sausage and potatoes are breakfast food, why aren’t sausage, potatoes and gravy breakfast food? Just because the potatoes are mashed? Where’s the logic there?” Naomi asked. 

“Okay, I get it, I’m a backwards-thinking Earther, too concerned with tradition to have common sense,” Holden said. 

“At least he admits it,” Naomi condemned, jokingly. Holden rolled his eyes and dropped the subject. 

“Thank you for breakfast, babe,” Holden said to Amos. “It’s good.” 

“Since when do you call me ‘babe?’” Amos asked. 

“I don’t know. You call me that sometimes. And ‘baby’ and ‘baby boy.’ What do I call you?” Holden asked. 

“You could call me ‘daddy.’”

“No,” Holden said emphatically. 

“Why do you want that so bad?” Alex asked Amos.

“There are very few things that make Jim squirm. I could fuck him raw and he’d thank me for it, but I say ‘good boy, come for daddy’ and he’ll jump off my dick like it bit him in the prostate. S’cute.” 

“I don’t like it,” Holden pouted. 

“I know, baby boy, I’m just teasing. You can call me ‘babe,’ if you wanna. I’ll make Alex call me ‘daddy.’”

“Good luck with that, brother,” Alex said. 

“Why is ‘brother’ not weird but ‘daddy’ is?” Naomi asked. 

“‘Brother’s not a sex thing. It’s a family thing,” Holden explained.

“So you call him ‘brother’ because you consider him your brother,” she clarified.

“Yeah, I guess,” Holden said. 

“Your brother, who you have sex with.” Amos laughed. Alex and Holden did not. 

“No. Yes. I mean, no. The brother thing and the sex are separate,” Holden tried to explain. 

“So he’s your boyfriend when you’re having sex and your brother when you’re not?” she asked. 

“I guess?” 

“I’m not still your boyfriend when we’re not having sex?” Amos stoked the flames. “That hurts my feelings,” he joked. 

“No. You’re always my boyfriend. You’re just only my brother when we’re not having sex?” 

“But he’s still your boyfriend when he’s your brother,” Alex played along.

“You call him ‘brother,’ too, asshole,” he retaliated. Everyone was laughing except for Holden, who was pouting. 

“Relax, honey. We’re teasing.” 

“You really don’t think it’s weird to call him ‘daddy’ in bed?” Holden asked Naomi.

“Oh, for sure it’s weird,” said Naomi, smiling, “I just don’t think it’s especially weirder than anything else you do.” Holden harrumphed but didn’t argue further. 

There was a question that had been burning in the back of Alex’s mind for the entire two weeks they’d been together on the ship. He got hints at an answer through his close observation of his three friends, but had never felt comfortable asking it outright. He thought about the night before, fucking Holden in the ass while Amos used his mouth. Eating Naomi out then, and again in the morning. He figured he was allowed to ask the damn question, or they’d forgive him if he wasn’t. 

“Am I allowed to ask a personal question?” is what he led with. 

“Your tongue has been inside me. Twice. I think we can get personal, Alex,” Naomi said. 

“Right, yeah. Um, right,” he stuttered as he tried to compose the question. 

“Out with it,” Amos said with his mouth full. 

“Are you three together? Like a polyamorous couple? Or… is couple the right word? Thrupple?” 

“Don’t say ‘thrupple,’” said Amos, which wasn’t an answer. 

“Whatever. Is it the three of you? Or is it Naomi and Holden and Amos and Holden?” 

“I don’t know if I even know the answer to that,” admitted Holden. “I think that’s up to Naomi and Amos.” 

“You know my stance,” said Amos. “Free love, and all that.” 

“Are you asking me if I want to be Amos’s girlfriend?” asked Naomi. Her intonation did not give away her answer. 

“I guess,” shrugged Holden.

“And you’d be cool if the answer was yes?”

“Yes,” he said with surprisingly little hesitation.

“Then I guess we’re a thrupple,” she said to Alex. Huh. 

“Not a thrupple. Polyamorous relationship,” Holden said. 

“That okay with you, Alex?” Naomi asked. 

“Does it change anything?” Alex asked instead of answering. 

“I don’t think so,” she said. 

“Then sure,” he answered, and it was the truth. Alex didn’t feel left out or alone, just genuinely happy for them. He did wonder if he would be a part of that if he wanted to, but he didn’t ask, because he didn’t want to. He preferred the friendship with benefits. Romance hadn’t really worked out for him in the past, and he didn’t really have much romantic interest in his crew, anyway. He was a one girl kind of guy. Or one guy, apparently, lately, but that was more of a sex thing. He was working hard on trying not to label it. 

“Does that mean I get to fuck Naomi without you around?” Amos asked Holden. 

“If I’m busy, sure,” said Holden. 

“You’re never busy lately,” Amos complained. 

“Exactly,” he smiled.

With no further questions, Alex ate his non-breakfast breakfast in silence and watched the three of them talk and laugh together. Not as an outsider, not as a voyeur. As a part of something so much bigger than himself. It was all he ever wanted. 


	7. the event: part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i want you all to know that i read an article about how to suck cock for this

###  **Alex**

When they finished breakfast, Alex went to his own bunk to hide out for a while. He imagined that Holden, Naomi, and Amos would have a lot of fucking to do to consumate their new relationship status. To his surprise, Amos came to visit him within an hour, his hair wet. Good. They all needed showers after the night before. 

“Hey.”

“I thought you’d be balls deep in Naomi by now,” Alex said instead of a greeting.

“Nah, Holden is.”

“And you’re not watching?”

“Not a watcher. Besides, I wanted to come see you,” he said simply, crossing the room to sit at the foot of Alex’s bed. Alex lifted his feet to make room, and replaced them in Amos’s lap. Idly, Amos massaged them with his big, strong hands. 

“You gonna ask me if I’m okay with all this?”

“No. You were okay enough with it when you were eating my girlfriend’s pussy, I figure you don’t got a lot of right to complain.” 

“Your _ girlfriend.”  _

“Yeah,” Amos said, smiling proudly. “Naomi Nagata. My motherfucking girlfriend. How ‘bout that?” 

“You’re a lucky bastard.”

“Don’t be jealous. I still got plenty of time to suck your dick.” 

“Good. But I think maybe I wanna suck yours, instead. Right now.”

“Yeah?” Amos lit up. 

“If you’ll show me how,” Alex suggested, demure. He remembered Amos had said he wanted to be his teacher.  _ I want to teach you how to please me,  _ Amos’s voice echoed in Alex’s head. 

“Yeah, brother, I’ll show you how,” he said. “Off,” he prompted Alex to move his feet and stood up to undress when he did. Alex stood as well, but didn’t take his clothes off. 

“You want me on my knees?” he asked with wide eyes. Amos usually kneeled before Alex to blow him. 

“Nah, that shit’s uncomfortable,” he said. He sat down at the head of the bed with his legs spread to make room. He was empowered in his nakedness, his soft cock hardening as he stroked it leisurely. He patted the bed in front of him. 

“If kneeling’s so uncomfortable, why do you always do it like that?” Amos shrugged. 

“It’s hot. I make Jim do it on his knees all the time. He’s my sub, I’m yours. You’re not submitting to me.” Alex didn’t know how he felt about Amos being his ‘sub’. He preferred ‘friend who submits to him sometimes.’ He didn’t think Amos would see the difference. 

“Isn’t sucking dick always at least a little bit submissive?” 

“No. There’s power in giving someone pleasure. You’re in charge here.” 

“Okay.” Alex got to his hands and knees for Amos. He didn’t really see the aforementioned ‘power’ in it, but he didn’t mind it. If Amos’s cock was daunting from farther away, it was terrifying up-close and personal.

“Relax,” Amos cooed, oddly soothing. “You don’t have to take it all.”

“I don’t even know where to start. I feel like a fucking preschooler.” 

“I don’t put my dick in preschoolers’ mouths. You’re doing fine. Take a deep breath.” Alex did. His fear must’ve shown on his face, because Amos said, “you don’t have to do this.” 

“I know. I want to try it. I can’t promise I’ll like it, but I’d like to try.” 

“You don’t have to promise you’ll like it. Just promise you’ll stop if you don’t.” 

“I promise.”

“We don’t have to go straight into it like this. We can make out a little bit, get comfy. Get you in the right headspace,” Amos offered. 

“I don’t have a blow job headspace. I want to do this.” 

“If you’re doing it to get it over with, we can forget it.” Frustrated, Alex sat up. 

“Do  _ you _ not want me to do this? I thought you wanted me to do this.” 

“Not if you’re doing it just ‘cause you think I want you to do it.” 

“Isn’t that the point of a blow job? To make someone else feel good? I want you to feel good.”

“There are a lot of ways you can make me feel good. It’s not gonna be good for me if you’re hating it the whole time.”

“How can I know if I hate it if you won’t let me  _ try?” _ Amos’s erection was flagging, and Alex hadn’t even gotten hard. It was the least sexy conversation they’d ever had. Alex didn’t know Amos was capable of having such an unsexy conversation that wasn’t about killing someone. 

“Okay, fuck it,” said Amos, and Alex was a little bit terrified of what he’d do next. He stood, huge and naked, and yanked Alex up to stand with him. He got close, pulling Alex in gently, one hand on his hip and the other on the nape of his neck. Their lips connected in an insistent kiss that made the awkwardness of the last few minutes melt away like butter. The kiss was scorching hot and hungry, moving from gentle touches of the tongue to biting lips and panting in seconds flat. Alex grounded himself in the familiarity of Amos’s body, comforted by the taste of him. 

“We’re good at this part,” Alex said, catching his breath as Amos’s mouth moved relentlessly against his neck. 

“We go good together, you and me,” said Amos, breath hot on his skin. The kiss resumed in its ferocity, uninterrupted by the slide of Alex’s zipper down his torso as Amos smoothly undressed him. Amos laid a kiss on Alex’s exposed shoulder and pulled the jumpsuit to the ground. He ran his hands down Alex’s chest in a sensual and comforting motion. Amos’s hands anchored him to reality, washed the insecurity from his skin like an eraser as they dragged across his pectoral muscles and abdomen. He tugged at the hem of the tank top he wore under his uniform and Alex hastily moved to remove it. “Slowly. Relax.” Amos stroked Alex’s hardening dick through his boxers, kissing his clavicle, shoulders, and neck as the article fell to the floor. 

Alex pulled Amos back into their kiss by his chin, asserting whatever semblance of control he had left over the situation. As their mouths collided, Amos pulled Alex’s boxers down under his balls and ghosted his fingers down the length of his cock, and Alex let go of the last inklings of control. He didn’t want to be in control, not this time. He wanted to let Amos tease him, take him, teach him. He dropped his boxers to the floor. 

“Sit. Gonna show you how,” Amos said once they were both fully hard. 

“Thought I was gonna suck you.”

“It don’t have to be one or the other. Sit at the headboard, legs spread, like I was.” Alex followed the instruction. Amos laid on the bed on his stomach, and propped himself up on his elbows. “It ain’t about taking it all at once. Tease a little, get to know what you’re working with. Dicks are friendlier than they look.” Ignoring the roll of Alex’s eyes, Amos trailed tantalizing, light kisses down the shaft, and licked a stripe with his pointed tongue up the underside. “Get your mouth nice and wet, too.” 

“You should teach a master class,” said Alex. 

“Take a real hands-on approach to learning, me,” he laughed. “The head’s the sensitive part, focus there. Work smarter, not harder.” Amos pulled back Alex’s foreskin to expose the blushed tip. He flicked the underside of the head with his tongue, and it unlocked a pleasure Alex was sure he’d never known before. “Most sensitive part of the cock, more often than not. Can drive you fucking crazy without even taking you in my mouth, just the tip of my tongue at that pretty pink head.”

“Smarter, not harder.” 

“Exactly. And if I use my lips, just a little...” he started, interrupting himself by wrapping his wet lips just around the tip while he continued flicking him with his tongue. The heat from his breath combined with the teasing of his lips and the motion of his tongue made Alex shudder with want as precome leaked from his slit. Amos licked at the bead, and his satisfied hum at the taste sent intense vibrations through Alex’s body. The noise Alex made was somewhere between a roar and a plea. Whatever it was, it was involuntary, like the growl of a hungry stomach. 

“Fuck, more, please,” Alex whined. Amos spit in his hand and stroked Alex’s length, using the other hand to tug gently at his balls. 

“Don’t be afraid to use your hands. Basically no one can take anybody’s cock all the way their first time, and basically no one can take my cock all the way, ever, so don’t hurt yourself trying.” He took it just a little past the tip, sliding it in and out as he stroked the rest with his hand. When he pulled off, it was a betrayal. “Take it as far as you want to, not as far as you can. They might be the same thing, they might not. Use your hand to take the rest, get it nice and wet so it slides easy. My dick is stupid. Can’t tell the difference.” Alex figured he probably said that for his benefit, so he wouldn’t feel bad he couldn’t take it deeper when the time came to try. He probably needed to hear it.

Alex usually thought of getting head as a preamble to sex, a fun step to get his dick wet while Amos prepped himself to get fucked. He hadn’t been with many women who liked doing it, so in his past it had been a rare indulgence, generally brief and not particularly practiced. He’d never complained about a blow job before, but this was a whole new level. This wasn’t foreplay, this was the whole goddamn ballgame, and he didn’t want it to end. Though, if Amos kept tugging gently at his balls and sucking him like he was trying to get cement through a coffee stirrer, it was gonna end pretty soon.

“Most guys, you’re gonna wanna be a little gentle with the balls. I can take it a little rougher. Or a lot rougher, if you want me crying for you, but we might need a safeword that I won’t use.”

“I’ve never seen you cry.” 

“You don’t fuck me very rough,” he said matter-of-factly. “Don’t warn me when you’re ready to come. Just feed it to me, I’ll take it.” 

It didn’t take long for him to finish. Amos’s hand stroked and twisted expertly at the base while he worked his mouth like a hoover at the head. He came without warning, as instructed, spilling at the back of Amos’s tongue. Amos swallowed and, impressively, didn’t grimace at the taste. Alex didn’t think he’d be capable of anything Amos did, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that. 

“You don’t have to swallow. You don’t even have to make me come in your mouth. I’ll lick it up if you make me come on your face.” Alex nodded nervously instead of replying. 

Amos sprawled out, once again, this time at the other side of the bed. Alex assumed Amos’s previous position. Amos’s dick was still big and hard in his face, but Alex approached it more relaxed than before. Not confident, but relaxed enough. 

“You look good like that. Could just jerk off on that handsome face,” said Amos. He was giving Alex an out. Alex didn’t take it.

“No. Be a good boy and feed me your dick,” he mustered. Smiling proudly, Amos spit on his own cock and held it by the base like an offering. Alex used Amos’s spit to slick the way as he went through the familiar motion of jerking Amos’s cock. He flinched when Amos ran his fingers through his hair. 

“Not gonna force you down, man,” Amos promised, reading his mind. “Take your time, I like the tease.” Alex decided to stop being such a wimp and just lick the thing already. He started with a tongue-kiss at the tip, then, slowly but surely, made his way down the base with licking kisses. He breathed in the smell of him, a distinct scent that didn’t disgust him nearly as much as he thought it was supposed to. He actually kind of liked the earthy musk of it.  _ That’s a really fucking gay thought to have, _ his internal monologue mouthed off,  _ though I guess gay thoughts are par for the course when you’re kissing another guy’s dick.  _ Amos throbbed in his hand, which he imagined was a good sign. He licked the underside from the base, and the journey to the tip was dizzyingly long. 

He tried to remember what  _ Professor Burton _ taught him, but the steps were blurred in his mind, and he gave into the primal urges that had been threatening to take over since he first breathed in that intoxicating scent. He did remember to flick his tongue at the tip, which earned him a guttural moan from Amos that was more rewarding than any good grade he’d ever received in school.

When he finally took the leap of faith and took it in his mouth, he wasn’t afraid. He relaxed his throat and sucked what he could, stroking the rest with a light touch that he’d build slowly into a firm and fast jerk. He didn’t open his eyes to gage how much of it he took, just bobbed his head on what fit in his mouth. 

“Come up for air,” Amos instructed after who-knows-how-long. Alex obeyed, even if it felt a little bit like losing. Amos would tell him that was stupid, because it was, so he didn’t say it out loud. “Keep using your hands, feels so fucking good,” Alex spit in his hand and stroked Amos fast, twisting his wrist at the ridge like he knew he liked. Missing the taste and the fullness of Amos in his mouth, Alex went back to work, jerking him faster as his shallow breaths and little suppressed moans signaled Amos’s desperation. “Gonna come,” he warned. He gave plenty of time for Alex to heed his advice to let him come on his face, but Alex didn’t stop. He wanted Amos to come in his mouth. He hummed an acknowledgment,  _ yes, Amos, come for me,  _ and it was all Amos needed to bring him over the edge. He jerked Amos through the waves of his orgasm, suckling on the spilling tip with a teasing flick of his tongue. 

Alex still didn’t like the taste of come, but he sure liked the filthy kiss that Amos laid on him, swapping come and spit between them. He spit the load in Amos’s mouth and Amos received it graciously. 

They didn’t talk for a little while after, but it was a good silence. Alex needed time to come down from the euphoric high, and he did so with Amos’s big, muscled arm wrapped comfortably around him. There was none of the typical awkwardness he felt after sex, none of the blurry grey area between the time when they’re supposed to be lovers and the time when they’re supposed to be friends. They were simply Alex and Amos, basking in the afterglow of world-bending sex.

“You think you’re officially Team Cocksucker now?” Amos broke the silence. 

“That come with a tee-shirt?”

“I’ll get ‘em made. You, me, and Jim. We’ll get photos taken.”

“Jim would probably get off on that.” 

“Yeah,” Amos said fondly. “What a fucking slut.” 

“I’m starting to think your cock just does that to people,” Alex said. 

“Does what?”

“Makes ‘em slutty.” 

“I made you slutty?” 

“I don’t know yet, for sure. But I really liked sucking your cock.”

“That’s not that slutty.” 

“I wanna go suck Holden’s cock, see how it’s different.” 

“That’s a little slutty.”

“I wanna watch you fuck Naomi, and I wanna taste her off your cock.” 

“That’s pretty fucking slutty.” 

“You ruined me. I used to be a gentleman.” 

“I like you like this.” 

“I really didn’t think I would like doing that so much.”

“But you did?”

“Yeah, fuck. Yeah.” 

“You wanna try it in your ass next?”

“Not while I’m alive.”

“Worth a shot.”

“I need to brush my teeth. But I also kind of want to stay here forever with you.” 

“Did my magic cock make you a slut and a romantic?” 

“No, but your gigantic body makes a very comfy pillow,” Alex said, snuggling closer. 

“This bed is not big enough for the two of us.” 

“Maybe we should keep the big bed in the living room.” 

“Oh, we’re totally keeping that,” Amos insisted. “Gonna sleep there every night, so whoever wants to join me can.” 

“You’re a cuddly bastard, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. My cock made you slutty, Holden’s cock made me cuddly.”

“Cute. You’re really enjoying this four-way thing, huh?”

“What’s not to like? Never even had a family before. Now I got a family  _ and _ all the cock, pussy, and ass I wanna play with? I’m the closest thing to ‘in love’ as I’m ever gonna get. I’m happy.”

“That was almost sweet.” 

“You like it, too, right?” 

“Yeah, I really fucking do.” 

“Good.” 


	8. epilogue

###  **Amos**

That night, he was laying in the living room, which he had officially commandeered as his bedroom for the duration of their journey to Tycho. His stomach was full of another meal he made for the family, which he hoped they weren’t getting too used to, because they were going to start pulling their weight again as soon as the high of the new relationship wore off. Until that happened, if it ever did, he was more than happy to spoil them. 

The bed was very big for one man, even one as big as Amos. It was made up of two beds that were each already bigger than his own. He sprawled out under a blanket that was big enough for half the bed, and reflected on the year of time that passed in his rear-view mirror.

Most of the “reflection” Amos did on a normal basis was functionally more like flipping through a mental scrapbook of pornographic memories than any real introspection, but recently he’d found that he had a lot less use for fantasizing about all the filthy things he’d like to do. After all, for the most part, he’d been allowed to actually do whatever he wanted, at least to Holden. The absence of need for fantasies freed his mind up a lot to think about other things that he didn’t typically think about, like “love” and “relationships.” 

Holden had said once on Ilus that he thought all Amos cared about was fighting, fucking, and fixing things. He said it like he’d been sorry for thinking it, like he’d been proven wrong by something Amos did or said, but Amos thought it summarized him pretty well. His brain worked by putting things into easily-digestible categories, and those worked as well as anything else. 

Holden didn’t have an easy, alliterative grocery list of things that mattered to him. Most days, it seemed like just about everything mattered to Holden, and Amos could almost never figure out why. Maybe Holden, poetic as his mind was, could come up with a mnemonic for what went through that big brain. It would be like… fairness, fidelity, and… fuckin’ Naomi Nagata. Plus a million other things that didn’t fit the formula. Holden was complicated, but for the first time in his entire life, Amos didn’t mind navigating the labyrinth of another person’s thoughts and emotions. When it came to Holden, he could put in some effort. 

Alex was a little easier to figure out, if only because their relationship didn’t demand that Amos figured him out. Alex didn’t have high expectations of Amos, which was nice, because Amos didn’t have a habit of meeting people’s high expectations. Alex was his best friend first and his lover second, and they both liked it like that. Alex had a lot of deep and complex feelings that Amos didn’t even begin to understand, but it was easy to make him happy. Alex needed music in his ears, beer in his belly, and the sleek steel of the Rocinante’s controls at his fingertips, and he was the happiest cowboy in the wild west. Amos liked seeing him happy. It was that simple. 

Amos didn’t have to try to understand Naomi. She told him very clearly what she needed from him, never made him flounder to figure it out. They’d been friends long before the Rocinante, and she never asked about his past, and he never asked about hers. He imagined he got the better end of that deal, since there was no way her past was worse than his. She understood him better than he understood himself, got the meaning behind what he said and did, even when he didn’t think there was a meaning behind it. He’d wanted her just about since the moment he saw her, which Amos supposed didn’t mean much, since he thought about having sex with basically every hot person he laid his eyes on. What meant more was that he never stopped wanting her, even when he got to know her as a person. He only wanted her more, wanted her more deeply than he knew how to. She was his  _ girlfriend _ now. Naomi Nagata  _ liked  _ him,  _ loved _ him as more than the puppy that followed her around. He would spend the rest of his life trying to deserve that. 

Maybe Amos was more than fighting, fucking, and fixing things. There was one thing that had changed majorly over the course of the year, one more ‘F’ word that he thought he’d never get to know. Amos Burton thought about four things: fighting, fucking, fixing things, and family.

His family trickled into the living room to sleep, and he was grateful they took the un-subtle hint when he announced he’d be sleeping there. 

Holden was first, wrapped cozily in a blanket, clothed in one of Amos’s tank tops and his own sweats. 

“Is that my undershirt?” Amos asked, knowing the answer. 

“Smells like you,” Holden said. “Don’t make it weird.” He curled up next to Amos under the covers, forcing himself closer like a lapdog trying to dig into a mattress.

“How are you the toughest sonofabitch in the galaxy when you got a job to do, but when you’re alone in my bed you’re suddenly, like, a chihuahua that can’t find its mom?” Amos asked, rubbing Holden’s back. 

“‘Cause I trust you,” he answered, and Amos felt all warm and stuff. 

“Good,” he said after a moment. He continued petting Holden lovingly in silence for a while, comforted by his soft purrs. Amos ended the silence with breaking news. “Alex sucked my dick earlier.”

“Isn’t that none of my business?”

“Yes. But I’m bragging.”

“He better than me?”

“Not a contest.”

“If it were a contest, would I win?”

“Yes, but be quiet about it.” 

“It’s okay,” Holden said, “I think he eats pussy better than me, I need the win.” 

“Naomi say that?” 

“She didn’t have to.”

“We should have a contest.” 

“No, we shouldn’t,” he laughed. 

“C’mon. Cunnilingus contest. Cunn-olympics.” 

“No.”

“You’re afraid you’re gonna lose.” 

“Or I don’t want to objectify the love of my fucking life.” 

“That, and you’re afraid you’re gonna lose,” Amos insisted. 

“Maybe a little, but mainly the first thing,” Holden admitted, smiling bashfully.

Light seeped into the room as the door swung open. Naomi’s long figure, silhouetted in the doorframe, cast a shadow on the floor and announced her arrival. 

“My baby boys,” she cooed, crossing the distance between the hall and the bed. She snuggled in on Amos’s other side, a welcome surprise. He’d expected her on Holden’s side. 

“Settle an argument for us,” Amos started. 

“No,” Holden barked, embarrassed. Amos shushed him. 

“Who’s best at eating your pussy?” 

“You or Jim, or you, Jim, or Alex?” she asked. 

“You’re entertaining this notion?” Holden whined.

“Me, Jim, or Alex,” Amos clarified. As if summoned, Alex opened the door. 

“What am I interrupting?” he asked. 

“Come cuddle. Naomi’s telling us who’s the best at eating pussy,” said Amos. The three of them were pretty centered on the mattress. Alex could lay next to Holden or Naomi. Usually, when they laid together or even when they sat on the couch, Naomi was on one end and Alex was on the other, so that Naomi and Holden could be next to each other, Holden and Amos could be next to each other, and Amos and Alex could be next to each other. He supposed the new Naomi-plus-Amos boyfriend-and-girlfriend situation changed that a little bit. Naomi had as much a place next to Amos as she did next to Holden. There was no set order anymore. Alex planted himself next to Naomi, which wasn’t a big surprise. 

“So, me, Jim or Alex?” Amos pried. 

“Jim,” said Naomi definitively. 

“Jim, because Jim’s so good at eating pussy, or Jim, because Jim would be the most sad if you didn’t pick him?” said Alex.

“Both?” answered Naomi like a question. Amos laughed. 

“Is my ego that fragile?” asked Holden. 

“Yes,” they all three answered, Naomi’s softer and followed by a “, baby.” 

“I don’t care if Alex is better than me at eating your pussy as long as I still get the opportunity to do my best,” Holden said. 

“I would never deprive you of that, darling,” Naomi teased. “Honestly, I’m counting my lucky stars that I got three guys that can even find my clit. You all get top marks.” 

“The bar is low,” said Amos.

“It sure is, my love,” she said. And that’s how Amos learned what people meant when they said ‘butterflies in my stomach.’ Amos pulled her closer to him and put his hand on her ass, which is how he knew how to show affection. She giggled, and let herself be held close.

Out of nowhere, Holden tilted Amos’s head toward him with his hand and laid a kiss on his lips. 

“What was that for?” 

“I need a reason?”

“No.”

“I love you,” Holden said. Amos gave him another kiss, but didn’t say it back. He felt it with all of his heart, but he wasn’t ready to let the words fall from his lips. 

“You’ve never said that to me outside of sex,” he said instead. 

“I haven’t?”

“Nope. You only ever love me when I’m fucking you, or right after I’ve fucked you,” Amos said. He wasn’t upset about it, but it was something he noticed. 

“I never stop thinking about loving you. It’s just less likely you’ll punch me for it when your dick’s just been in my ass.” Did Holden really think he’d hurt him for saying ‘I love you?’

He remembered back to the first time Jim said those words. He probably didn’t handle it well, though he had been very thoughtful about it. The sex they had after was some of the most brutal they ever had, and Amos hadn’t made Holden come. It was the kind of rough treatment Holden always begged for, but Amos seldom gave it to him. In hindsight, he could see how a normal person might interpret the roughness as anger. It wasn’t. Amos had known that Holden felt like he was cheating on Naomi. He’d been punishing himself every day for falling in love with Amos when Naomi told him not to. So, Amos took it upon himself to remind him that what they had wasn’t love but filthy, degrading, desperate sex, and nothing more. It had become Amos’s way of showing kindness to Jim— giving him what he needed, even if it wasn’t what he explicitly asked for. It hurt him to know that the entire time, Holden might’ve thought it had meant he didn’t love him back. Really, it was the only ‘I love you’ Amos had known how to say. 

“I wouldn’t hurt you for saying you love me.” 

“You  _ have _ hurt me for saying I love you,” he said, no accusation in his voice. At least he didn’t appear to harbor resentment about it. 

“Never hurt you in a way you didn’t like, right?” Amos asked, needing to be sure.

“Right. I like what we do. You give me what I never knew I needed.” 

“Good. Besides, shit’s different now. I like being loved by you,” he said, and hoped Holden heard in it the ‘I love you too’ it was meant to be. 

“Good, ‘cause I’m so fucking crazy about you.” 

“Me, too,” Amos said softly, laying a kiss on Holden’s forehead. 

“Ain’t that sweet,” Alex mocked, lovingly. 

“Shuddup, Alex,” said Amos. “I’m crazy about your Martian ass, too.” Alex didn’t say anything to that. Amos couldn’t see his face in the dark to know if he was stressing or smiling. “Don’t make it weird,” he added to lighten it. 

“I took your monster dick in my mouth, and liked it. It’s already beyond weird. That don’t mean I got a problem with it.” 

“Mazel tov, Kamal,” Holden teased as though he was hearing that information for the first time, “baby’s first blow job. When do I get that mouth on me?” 

“I think you’ve got enough of a mouth on you already, Captain.”

“Settle down, children,” said Naomi, with a tone of voice like an eye-roll vocalized. 

“No, let them duke it out. Maybe we can get them to naked wrestle,” Amos suggested. Naomi laughed, and kissed him on the cheek. 

They shot the shit for a little while, just the four of them together, talking about everything and nothing. 

“Get closer, Alex, I don’t bite,” said Naomi as they were settling to sleep. Alex hesitated like he didn’t believe he was allowed, then wrapped himself around her. Their closeness connected a broken circuit between the four of them. In two weeks, they’d gone from two couples and an odd man out, to three lovers and a best friend, to four members of a family.

Amos felt whole. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been writing this fic series basically non-stop for a month and a half. I think I don't know who I am outside of it anymore. Now back to rewatching the show and continuing the book series, I GUESS. I think this is the end of this series, but I also said that when I finished The New Normal, and then I wrote 29k more words, so we'll see. No promises, but let me know if there's any unexplored element of this fic universe you'd like me to explore in another timestamp.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @warren_space


End file.
